


Little Wild Animal

by DiscontentedWinter



Series: Little Wild Animal Universe [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Feral Stiles Stilinski, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, all werewolf AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-03-29 17:35:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 23
Words: 61,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3904933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek Hale finds a feral human on his pack's property.<br/>Humans are supposed to be extinct.<br/>But then, Stiles is full of surprises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Little Wild Animal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5156276) by [Sara_Kain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sara_Kain/pseuds/Sara_Kain)
  * Translation into Español available: [Little Wild Animal (Traducción)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8229916) by [melh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melh/pseuds/melh)



> ***
> 
> Guys, I have no idea how long this is going to be. Once again, I'm pantsing the hell out of something. This should surprise nobody who knows me.  
> And once again, I'm posting pretty much as soon as I'm writing, so nothing has been beta-read. If there are any glaring errors or ridiculous typos, point them out in comments and I'll make edits.  
> My posting schedule is as organised as the rest of me -- not at all! -- but will hopefully be every few days. It turns out I can't write what I'm supposed to be working on without writing Sterek simultaneously.  
> Welcome aboard my crazy train! 
> 
> The explicit tag is for later on in the story. I'll update any other tags as they become relevant, so feel free to point out any I should be using. 
> 
> Also, I keep forgetting to tell people I'm now on tumblr:[thisdiscontentedwinter](http://thisdiscontentedwinter.tumblr.com)

It’s Cora who first scents the kit. She’s walking a few steps in front of Derek though the Preserve when she stops suddenly and turns, her face screwed up. “Ugh! Foxes _stink_!” Then she frowns. “Wait… that’s weird.”

Derek lifts his nose.

Foxes. They’ve been hanging around for weeks now. The winter has driven them closer to town, and to the Hale territory, than they would usually dare come. They smell of musk and urine, bitter and sharp, and overlaid with the earthier scents of the woods: pine and loam and, today, the sweetness of petrichor after this morning’s shower. Except Cora’s right. Derek can smell it too. Something… _different_. Something new. Derek doesn’t think he’s ever smelled anything quite like it before, but he knows one thing for sure: it’s not a fox.

Cora shoots him a look, and they pick their way wordlessly down into the narrow gully. In spring, a creek runs through it. In winter the creek bed is full of rocks and dead leaves.

Derek hears the foxes before he sees them; the crunch of small paws in leaves, the rustle of dry undergrowth, twigs snapping, and the cautionary yips of the pack warning of predators approaching. The flash of a red tail is enough to make Derek’s senses sharpen, his wariness at the unfamiliar scent overtaken by a sudden rush of pleasure at the prospect of a hunt. He and Cora crash through the undergrowth after the foxes, all stealth forgotten now the chase is on.

There are five of them—no, six—and something else too. Before he has a chance to fix on that unfamiliar scent, Derek skids on a clump of wet leaves. He hears Cora’s bark of laughter as he almost lands on his ass, and growls at her in response. He’s tempted to shift into his wolf form, but Cora’s still in human form, and if he bounds past her now on four paws she’ll call him a dirty cheater.

A series of frantic barks cut through the sharp morning air.

Derek scrambles down the last few feet of the bank and hits the ground running. He follows Cora down the creek bed, the nearby crash of the foxes through the underbrush inciting them both to greater speeds.

Cora leaps over a fallen log. Derek follows.

For a moment, they’re both frozen with shock.

Six foxes. A family group, perhaps. Four adults and two kits. The kits are slowing them down. Three of the adults hang back, the rearguard, to give the kits time to get away. But they aren’t alone. There’s a boy with them—a _boy_ —scrabbling up the opposite side of the creek bed on his hands, naked, filthy, and working in tandem with the adult foxes to shepherd the kits away.

“What the _hell_?” Cora’s eyes flash gold.

Derek growls. Wildlife might not understand pack borders, but other shifters sure as hell should. Still, something’s not quite right here. Something still smells off. Derek shoves it to the back of his mind. It’s something that they can figure the hell out once they’ve dealt with a trespasser on Hale Pack territory.

Derek and Cora run toward the opposite bank of the creek, the foxes forgotten now. The boy has become their only target. He scrambles up the bank, a shower of dirt and dead leaves raining down in his wake. He’s trying to keep up with the foxes, but even from this distance Derek can hear his rasping breath, and the whine of pain every time he puts his weight on his left leg. He’s losing ground rapidly. The last of the foxes disappear over the top of the gully before the boy has made it even halfway up.

Derek and Cora reach him easily.

“This is Hale Pack territory!” Cora says, her top lip lifting in a snarl. “State your business.”

The boy continues to try and scramble upward, whimpering now.

“Hey!” Cora yells.

The boy scrabbles more frantically, and yelps. Derek can smell blood, and pain, and fear, every one of them overlaid against the boy’s own abnormal scent.

“Hey!” Cora yells again, and reaches down to grab the trespasser.

The boy rears up, snarling and snapping at Cora, a wild thing. Derek lets his fangs drop and his claws appear, ready for whatever the hell the boy’s about to shift into. Cora’s fingers are spread, her claws ready to extend, and she’s drawing her right arm back already, prepared to attack once the feral, thrashing boy gives her an opening.

Derek stares, but the boy doesn’t change.  

He doesn’t _change_.

Derek has never seen anything like it. He’s never smelled anything like it.

The boy is standing almost upright now, but hunched over. His posture is defensive, but he’s growling too. Derek catches a glimpse of honey-colored eyes from behind a tangle of filthy, matted hair. The boy’s fingers are curled into fists.

 _Fists_.

Nothing that can make claws would ever make a fist.

The boy postures and growls. He makes a stuttering, chattering sound in his throat, interspersed with a few high-pitched yelps; the gekkering of a fox kit.

Cora takes another step toward the boy.

“Cora,” Derek says, his heart thumping.

The boy tries to turn, and stumbles, his feet tangled in the underbrush. He goes down heavily, and Derek winces as he hears the boy’s head thump against the ground. The boy whimpers, and then his eyes roll back in his head and he’s gone.

“What the hell is he?” Cora demands, her forehead creased in a frown.

 _Human_ , Derek thinks, but the thought is so absurd he can’t even bring himself to say it aloud.

He shakes his head instead, and picks the unconscious boy up.

 

 

***

 

The boy has been living with the foxes. Their scent—their _stench_ —pervades him. He might look like a person, but he stinks like a fox. He’s as skinny and long-legged as a half-grown kit as well.

He can’t be _human_.

There haven’t been humans in at least twenty years. The last one died in captivity in New York. Derek’s seen the pictures of the man. Everyone has. Okay, so there are plenty of conspiracy theorists out there who talk about colonies of humans living wild, but they’re the same sort of guys who believe in alien abduction and the yeti, so Derek’s never believed the stories. He’s wanted to. A part of him has mourned humanity in the same abstract way he’s mourned the dodo—why do we kill when we can so easily save?—but he’s never actually believed any were still alive.

His uncle Peter talks a lot about the history of civilizations, and how the weak have always been overcome by the strong. It’s just the way things are, he says, but Derek wonders if it’s the way things have to be. What’s wrong with a little idealism? What’s wrong with thinking that the planet is big enough to share with other creatures, other cultures?

 _“Humanity isn’t_ gone _, Derek,”_ Peter told him once. _“It’s only changed. It’s been hunted out and bred out. We only did to them what they did to the Neanderthals. We came from humanity and, in the end, we overcame it. It’s the survival of the fittest.”_

Somehow though, sharing DNA with an extinct species isn’t much of a consolation. Derek knows that several hundred years ago his ancestors were human, and that human history is his history as well, but there’s just something heartbreaking about the extinction of an entire species. It’s an irrevocable loss, whether dodo, or Neanderthal or human, but it’s a loss that Derek has had a lifetime to come to terms with. He isn’t prepared to revise history yet, not on account of a single feral trespasser. 

Not on account of some defective shifter.

“Mom!” Cora bellows as she pounds up the porch steps. “Mom!”

By the time Derek gets to the front door, the body of the boy limp in his arms, his mother is there to meet him.

“Derek! What’s going on? Who’s—” Talia’s eyes widen as she catches the scent, and she claps her hand to her mouth, and in that moment Derek knows for sure.

“We found him in the woods,” Cora says. “He fell down trying to run away and cracked his head. What do we do with him?”

Derek has never seen his mother speechless in his life, but today is the day for impossibilities.

It only takes Talia a moment to recover. “Inside,” she says. “Downstairs.”

Derek knows without being told what basement room his mother means. It’s a large room, clean but plain, with nothing but a mattress on the floor. Most of the pack has used the room at one time or another, usually when puberty hit and their shifts suddenly became harder to control with the onset of heat. When the urge to run as a wolf got twisted up with the urge to hunt something apart from prey; to mate, to _breed_. Puberty sucked. And to be locked in a basement room with your mother for the duration of the full moon, while your hormones were raging, because she was the alpha and the only one who could talk you down? Mortifying. Thank god those days are long over.

Derek gently deposits the unconscious boy on the mattress, and turns to his mother.

She gestures him to back away, and closes and locks the door.

“What is he?” Derek asks in a low voice.

“What does he smell like?” Talia asks.

“Like a fox kit,” Derek says. “And like something else.”

“Like a human,” Talia says in a quiet voice.

“That’s impossible.”

Talia’s face is grave. “I would have thought so too.”

 

***

 

The boy—the _kit_ —is conscious again within the hour. Derek can hear him snuffling and whimpering, and the scrape of his hands and knees on the floor as he crawls around the room. He yips a few times, questioning, calling, and then he’s silent as he listens for the other foxes to respond. They don’t, and the noises the kit makes become small and distressed.

Derek tries not to listen to them. He sits on the floor of the living room and plays cars with his nephew Jacob. Well, Derek plays cars. Jacob just picks the cars up and enjoys the sound they make when he smashes them into one another.

During the day, most of the pack adults are out at work.

Derek is on break from college, and Cora is on suspension from high school for the week—something about talking back in class, unsurprisingly—so it’s just them, and his mom, and the smallest pack members, Jacob and Cassie. Jacob is two, and Cassie is four. Both of them are Derek’s sister Laura’s kids.

“Uncle Derek?” Cassie asks, trailing into the living room with a peanut butter sandwich. “What’s that sound?”

The kit is whining.

“A fox kit, baby,” Derek says. He doesn’t even know if Cassie knows what a human is.

Cassie climbs onto the couch to eat her sandwich. “He sounds sad.”

“He’s hurt and scared,” Derek tells her. 

“He needs a hug,” Cassie tells him. “Where’s his pack?”

“ I don’t know,” Derek says. He thinks of the foxes that ran, and wonders how long the kit has been with them. Long enough to learn how to act like one of them. But where the hell did he come from before that? Humans are supposed to be extinct.

Which leads to another question Derek isn’t willing to think about yet: what are they supposed to do with him?

 

***

 

Alan Deaton is a vet. He’s also the Hale Pack emissary, which means Talia trusts him to keep their secrets. He turns up at the house still wearing his scrubs, and smelling faintly of antiseptic.

“Talia tells me you have an injured animal,” he says when Derek opens the door.

Behind Derek, Talia sweeps down the stairs. “It’s a little more complicated than that, Alan.”

Deaton looks unsurprised. “Well then, let’s take a look at the patient.”

Cora tries to follow them down to the basement, but Talia holds up her hand. “I need you to keep an eye on the kids.”

“Why does Derek get to help?”

“Derek is stronger than you,” Talia says.

Deaton’s eyebrows rise a fraction of a degree, and Derek wonders what he’s expecting to find in the basement.

Talia opens the door.

The kit’s scream echoes throughout the house. It’s the scream of a cornered wild animal—half afraid, half enraged—and the sound of it reverberates in Derek’s bones and brings his wolf lunging close to the surface of his skin. Derek’s just made it to the doorway when the kit bursts free.

Before Derek knows it, he’s got an armful of struggling, growling kit. Derek tries to keep hold of him, but the kit squirms, turns, and sinks his teeth into Derek’s forearm, cutting and tearing at the flesh. For a second Derek’s so surprised by the sharp pain—so bright that it flares white against his vision—that he almost lets the kit go. Later, he thinks it’s probably the fact that the children were upstairs that made him tighten his grip instead. He couldn’t risk the kit hurting them.

“Oh, my,” Deaton murmurs, syringe in hand. He jabs the kit in the neck.

Derek waits until the kit stops struggling, and slowly releases him.

The kit whimpers and utters a few distressed yelps as the anesthetic takes hold. He staggers around the basement, shaking his head and stumbling sideways, until he’s so dozy that he doesn’t even care when Derek gets close enough to touch him. Derek guides him gently to the mattress on the floor, and kneels down with him. He doesn’t pull away when the kit half-climbs into his lap and tries to burrow under his arm.

He pets the kit’s filthy tangle of hair, and grimaces when his hand comes away covered in mites.

The kit is much more malleable now that’s he’s doped up to the eyeballs. He squirms and growls a little when Deaton begins to examine him, but it’s a half-hearted effort at most.

Deaton pats the kit’s flank as he kneels over him. “Where on earth did you find a human, Talia?”

“I didn’t,” Talia says from the door. “Derek and Cora did.”

“He’s quite feral,” Deaton says. He sniffs. “Living with… _foxes_?”

Derek nods, and watches as Deaton checks the kit over.

There are layers of dirt ground into his skin that will basically have to wear out, Deaton decides. Other than that, the boy isn’t in terrible shape. He’s thin, a little malnourished, but what animals in the Preserve haven’t had a lean winter? His feet are callused, the skin of his soles and around his heels thick and rough. The kit’s left ankle is severely sprained, and swollen with fluid. His skin is bruised black.

With the kit sedated, Deaton takes the opportunity to clean him. First he takes his clippers from his bag and shears the mass of filthy hair off the boy’s head. The kit grumbles and grimaces, his unfocussed eyes impossibly huge.

A bath is next. Deaton works a soft scrubbing brush over the kit’s skin. The water that drips off him is gray with filth. Then Deaton wipes him over with antiseptic, and something that smells of harsh chemicals to get rid of his mites and lice.

When the boy is as clean as he’s likely to get for now, Deaton dries him off and binds his sprained ankle.

“I’ll give you anti-inflammatory drops for his food,” he says. “And vitamin supplements. They’re chocolate flavored chews, so he should eat them with no problems. I want you to start him off with basic minced beef or chicken, and plain rice. Nothing too rich at first, or he’ll be sick.”

Derek nods, and rubs his fingers against the ridge of bone behind the boy’s ear. He looks surprisingly delicate with his head shorn, and so very young.

“How…how _old_ is he?” Derek asks. Because the last known human died twenty years ago.

Deaton takes another look. “Well, humans are hardly my specialty, but he’s adolescent. Maybe fifteen, sixteen? It’s difficult to know exactly.”

“So there were humans still alive, still breeding, sixteen years ago?” Derek frowns down at the kit. This changes everything he knows about history.

Deaton nods slowly. “So it appears.”

“There could be others out there,” Derek says quietly. Knowing it somehow makes the loss of humanity, their erasure from history, feel even more acute. The kit is something miraculous, and at the same time something achingly ephemeral.

Deaton begins to pack his things. “There has always been speculation about enclaves of humans surviving in remote areas,” he says. “Not that I would have believed it myself, until today.” He glances up at Talia. “My advice, if you want to hear it, is to keep this very much to yourself.”

Derek has a sudden image of the kit in a cage somewhere, and people paying money to go and stare at him.

“Your advice is always welcome, Alan,” Talia says with a faint smile.

Derek stares down at the kit’s face, and strokes his head again.

The kit blinks up at him, his amber eyes full of tears, and Derek feels a rush of pity for the little wild animal who is incapable of understanding what’s happening to him.


	2. Chapter 2

“We have a _what_ in the basement?” Peter Hale asks, blinking in confusion.

At times like these, Derek is glad his mom is the alpha.

“We have a human in the basement,” Talia says, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Cora and Derek found him in the Preserve. He’s feral, and he’s injured.” She casts her gaze around the table, fixing it briefly on every member of the pack. “And this information is not to go anywhere outside of this house.”

Talia doesn’t raise her voice for emphasis. She doesn’t have to. Her word is law. Even the kids know that.

The dining table in the Hale house seats up to thirty people. There are usually around twenty of the pack living at home at any time. Some extended family members and other affiliated pack members live in Beacon Hills itself, but Talia likes to keep her immediate family close. It’s less crowded than it sounds, somehow. The house is big. Or at least the pack is so used to living in each other’s pockets that nobody minds.

Derek picks at his salad and wonders if the kit is afraid down there in the dark basement. Derek had put some blankets down there for him after Deaton had left. He’d shaken one out over the sleeping kit, and left the others folded beside the mattress. Now he’s worried that the kit doesn’t know how to use his hands except as paws, and won’t be able to unfold the other blankets.

It’s probably cold down there in the basement, too. Derek thinks he remembers reading something about humans running at lower temperatures than werewolves, and the kit had felt cold in his arms when he’d carried him inside earlier. Okay, he’s spent the entire winter living naked in the Preserve, and possibly been wild for years, but now he’s afraid and in shock, and he hasn’t got a pack of foxes to curl up with.

“What’s a human?” Nate asks loudly, breaking the silence that’s fallen over the room.

Nate’s father, William, shoves a bread roll toward him to try and distract him. It doesn’t work. Nate is six, and he’s on a mission.

“What’s a human, Aunt Talia?” Nate asks again.

“It’s like a unicorn!” his twin, Sarah, yells at him across the table.

“It’s nothing like a unicorn!” Matty, Derek’s twelve-year-old brother, snaps at the twins.

Dinner with the pack is never exactly a calming experience. Derek has learned to tune a lot of it out.

“A human,” Talia tells the kids, “looks just like you or me. But they lack the ability to shift, so they only have _one_ form.”

Matty, vindicated, huffs. Nate and Sarah both look dubious.

Derek excuses himself from the table and returns to the kitchen. He scrapes his leftovers off into the bin for the chickens—Aunt Clare’s pet project is to reduce the household’s waste by at least fifty percent by the end of the year—and loads his plate into the dishwasher. Then he takes the ground beef and rice he cooked up earlier and microwaves a small dish of it for the kit.

He checks the instructions on the anti-inflammatory drops carefully. Shifters heal quickly, and Derek is unfamiliar with measuring out medications. He doesn’t want to accidentally overdose the kit. He’s double checking the dosage again when he realizes he isn’t alone in the kitchen. Alex has sidled up beside him and is watching avidly.

Derek raises his eyebrows at his brother.

“Mom says I can give the human some clothes, if you can get him to wear them,” Alex tells him.

Derek looks his brother up and down. Alex is only thirteen, but he’s already tall, and the kit is too skinny, so they’re a close enough match. “Okay. Pick something comfortable, though. No buttons or laces. Maybe some track pants?”

Alex nods, and heads upstairs.

Derek takes a bottle of water out of the fridge, and wonders if the kit will know how to drink from it. He pours the water into a plastic mixing bowl instead.

He listens to the rise and fall of conversation from the dining room, not bothering to tune his senses to pick up the actual words. It’s the familiar rhythm of it that he likes. The low murmur of the adults, the higher pitched sound of the kids, all coming together in a hum of noise that says _pack_ , and _home_ , and _belonging_. Derek misses the pack when he’s at college.

Alex returns quickly with a pair of track pants, a worn sweater, and some socks. Derek lets Alex follow him down the basement stairs, then Alex helps load him up with the clothes. Derek can hear Alex’s heart beat a little faster. He’s anxious. “Mom says nobody’s allowed in except you or her or Deaton. Is he _dangerous_?”

“He’s scared,” Derek tells his brother. “And he’s feral. He bit me.”

The bite has long since healed over completely, but Derek doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt.

“Matty says humans have blunt teeth.”

“What would Matty know?” Derek teases gently.

Alex shows him a smile. “It says so in one of his science books.”

“Well, they didn’t feel exactly blunt at the time,” Derek says. “Close the door straight away, okay?”

He slips inside the dark basement room quickly, and Alex shuts the door behind him. Derek has no difficulties seeing in the dark, but the kit is obviously blind. He’s awake again, and huddled in the furthest corner, a blanket pulled half over him. He’s shivering, and his heartbeat is hammering rapidly.

“Remember me?” Derek asks, keeping his voice low.

The kit gives a trembling growl in response.

Well, that answers that.

Derek sets the water and the food down, and watches as the kit lifts his head warily. He sways a little from side to side, as though he’s trying to get a fix on the smell of the food.

Derek steps closer to the mattress in the middle of the floor, closer to the kit. The kit growls again, and presses back into the corner. Derek reaches down for the stack of blankets. He shakes them out, one by one, and leaves them in a heap on the mattress.

He talks slowly and calmly while he does it. “Where’d you come from, anyway? I know you miss your pack right now, and I know you’re scared, but you’re not really a fox kit, are you? How long have you been living like that?”

He doesn’t expect an answer. He just wants the kit to get used to the sound of his voice. He also doesn’t want to overwhelm it by forcing his presence on it for too long.

“Okay, so you should be a little more comfortable now. I’m not going to try and put these clothes on you tonight, because I have a feeling that wouldn’t go over too well with you, would it? So maybe we’ll try that some other time. But you’ve got your food, and your water, and your blankets, so that’s a start.”

The kit squints in his direction as he moves back toward the door.

“Nobody here is going to hurt you,” Derek says. He knows the kit can’t understand him, but it feels like the sort of thing that should be said aloud anyway. “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to look after you.”

The kit whines and hunches further into himself.

Derek wishes there was some way to make him understand, but he knows that nothing but time will do that. For now, the kit will have to remain miserable, until time and experience teach him otherwise.

“It’s okay,” Derek murmurs as he opens the door to let himself out. “You’re okay.”

He shuts and locks the door behind himself.

 

***

 

After the kids have been sent away to do their homework and get into bed, Derek finds his mother and Peter in the library. The library was his grandfather’s, and sometimes Derek imagines it still smells a little of rich tobacco and Turkish apple tea, two of his grandfather’s favorite after-dinner indulgences. Talia is sitting behind the desk, her face bathed in the glow of light from her laptop screen. Peter is lounging in one of the old wingback chairs, a book open on his lap.

“How is he?” Talia asks.

Derek shrugs and sits down in the chair next to Peter’s. “The same.”

“More to the point,” Peter says, raising his eyebrows, “what are you intending to do with him?”

Derek glances at his mother.

“To be honest, Peter,” Talia says, closing her laptop, “I haven’t thought much further than seeing if we can…” She trails off and sighs.

“ _Tame_ him?” Peter asks.

“Rehabilitate him,” Talia says firmly.

“From what Cora says, he can’t even walk upright.”

“He’s injured,” Derek says. “Maybe that’s why he can’t. Maybe when his ankle heals, he’ll be able to.”

He wants to believe that the kit can become human again, even if he’s not entirely sure exactly what the word means. To be a person, he supposes, even if he can’t shift. That’s how Talia explained humanity to the kids, but Derek thinks it must be more than that. Humans were the dominant species for millennia. They built civilizations. Derek feels that to define them just because of something they lack is somehow shallow and unfair.  

He wants to know where the kit came from, and if there’s anybody out there missing him apart from a pack of foxes. He wants to know what the kit could be capable of, if only he could truly be a human.

Talia catches his gaze. “I didn’t ask you, Derek, and maybe I should have. Are you happy to do this?”

“What am I doing, exactly?” Derek asks.

“Taking charge of the human,” Talia says. “At least until you go back to college.”

“Yes.” There’s never been a question of that. Not since he saw the kit make a fist to try and defend himself against Cora in the Preserve. Bravery and desperation and vulnerability, all in that single abortive gesture.

“Huh,” Peter says with a smile. “Bet you’re sorry you didn’t get a vacation job now.”

Derek snorts. Making ridiculously complicated coffees for a never-ending line of asshole customers at Aunt Amy’s shop in Beacon Hills, or risk getting rabies from the feral kit? Derek had worked in the coffee shop over his last break, and hell no. Never again. Derek and customer service had not gone well together.

He shoots Peter a narrow stare.

Peter just smiles and turns a page over in his book.

“I’m not asking Derek to do it because he doesn’t have a job,” Talia clarifies. “I’m asking because I saw the way the boy responded to him.”

Derek raises his eyebrows, and wonders if his mom means when the kit was drugged and half-climbed into his lap. Because Derek’s pretty sure he was so stoned that his sudden need for warmth and affection was about at the same level as you’d find in any pill-popping teenager at a music festival.

“I’m asking you,” Talia says quietly, catching and holding Derek’s gaze, “because you’re my first choice.”

“I want to do it, Mom,” Derek says. He already feels responsible for the kit but, more than that, wants to be there when the kit is no longer afraid. He wants to see what the kit is, when he remembers how to be human. “I want to help him.”

Peter rolls his eyes, but his mom smiles at him and Derek warms with pride.

 

***

 

That first night Derek lies awake in bed, listening to the faint noises of panic and distress coming from the basement and wishing there was some way he could reassure the kit that he’s safe.

 

***

 

In the morning, the basement room is a mess.

The mattress, the blankets, and Alex’s clothes are all wet. There’s a puddle of urine in the corner of the room, but most of the mess is from the overturned water bowl. The kit is huddled in the corner again, shivering more violently than the day before. Derek thinks of the fragile birds he’d found from time to time when he was younger, fallen from their nests, their hearts beating too fast behind their thin ribs, that even when they were cradled safely in his cupped hands, died of shock.

“Shit,” Derek says, and takes a step toward him.

The kit growls and presses himself into the corner. He bares his teeth at Derek, his trembling upper lip drawn back to reveal his canines.

“Just let me clean you up and get you warm, okay?” Except there’s nothing Derek can say that the kit will understand.

He takes another step forward and the kit yips.

Derek gives up and retreats back upstairs to call Deaton.

While he waits, Derek sits at the top of the basement stairs and listens to the sound of the kit snuffling and whining.

Upstairs, the rest of the pack is slowly waking up. Derek can hear the creak of feet on floorboards, yawns and murmurs, and the thrum of water in the pipes. It isn’t long before Aunt Clare and Aunt Amy tread downstairs, fingers entangled like they’re still newlyweds, even though it’s been fifteen years.

“Morning, Der,” Clare says as they pass him at the doorway to the basement. She tilts her head as the kit whines, and a look of pity crosses over her face. She clicks her tongue.

“Morning,” Derek says.

Clare and Amy head down the hallway into the kitchen to start breakfast.

Deaton arrives within twenty minutes. He puts a few drops of something in another bowl of water for the kit, and Derek takes it downstairs and sets it on the basement floor, and then leaves the kit alone again. Moments later he hears the sound of the kit shuffling on his hands and knees across the floor, and then slurping at the water. A few minutes after that, the kit’s breathing deepens and his heartbeat slows. He’s out.

“The difficulty,” Deaton says as he wipes the kit clean, “is that we can’t do this every day, or every time he urinates.”

Derek hauls the wet bedding outside. “If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m all ears!” He’s missing _breakfast_ for this. “Because I think he’s a little big to put newspapers down for!”

“He’s not an animal, Derek,” Deaton says mildly when Derek returns with the mop. “He just needs to remember that.”

Except Derek has no idea how he’s supposed to make that happen.

He fetches fresh bedding from the closet upstairs, and a bundle of his own clothes, and brings them back down to the basement. The mattress will need to be dried out in the sun, so for today the kit will have to manage with only fresh blankets.

Then, while the kit is still knocked out, he and Deaton get him dressed. Track pants, and a shirt, and socks. His skin is shockingly cold to touch, and Derek takes the opportunity to try and chafe some warmth into the kit’s hands while he’s still unconscious. He’s not sure it makes any difference at all. He wonders if he should shift into his wolf form and curl up beside the kit to offer him some warmth, but there’s a good chance the kit will be more terrified of Derek as a wolf than Derek as a man. He settles for bundling as many blankets around the kit as he can.

Then, when Deaton leaves, Derek sits down on the basement floor beside the kit and begins to talk to him quietly, about everything and nothing.

The kit wakes slowly. With his head shorn, the kit’s eyes look impossibly huge. He smells of soap and antiseptic thanks to Deaton, and his nose twitches when he comes up, fighting drowsiness. He plucks at his clean t-shirt and track pants, his eyes growing even larger. Then he tries to struggle out of them.

“No,” Derek says.

The kit freezes, looking over at him.

Derek realizes the kit didn’t even know he was there. He keeps his voice low. “They’ll keep you warm, okay? They’re nice. Soft.”

The kit kicks the last of the blankets away and retreats immediately into the corner. He glares at Derek, and growls once or twice.

Derek tries a new tactic. He turns his back on the kit and ignores him.

The kit growls again.

Derek continues to ignore him.

He’s not sure how long it takes—upstairs, breakfast is finished, and the house empties as everyone rushes off to work and to school—but eventually the kit grumbles and huffs, sounding more annoyed now than afraid, and creeps slowly out of the corner to reclaim a tiny piece of territory on the discarded pile of blankets.

Some time after that, the kit actually falls asleep with Derek sitting only a few feet away from him.

It feels a lot like a victory.


	3. Chapter 3

By the third day, the kit is used to Derek’s presence. He sits on his mattress and watches Derek while Derek reads. Sometimes Derek reads aloud, and the kit makes curious noises, and it feels almost like it could be a conversation except neither one of them has any idea what the other is saying. Derek brings down a few of Jacob’s toys for the kit: a car, and a ball, and a plush bear. The kits sniffs them and then ignores them.

By spending all day with the kit, Derek is able to watch him and learn his body language. He fidgets when he needs to pee. The first time it happens, he wets his track pants and refuses to let Derek close enough to help peel them off him. The second time, Derek recognizes the warning signs and tries to herd the kit toward the bucket in the corner. Derek doesn’t even care if he uses the bucket. Just to have him start to use the same spot each time would feel like an accomplishment. The kit, of course, backs off, growls, and then pisses himself, and then Derek’s afraid he’s undone all his hard work he’s already put in by scaring the kit again. But the kit inches closer again once Derek starts to read. When he tries to wriggle out of his track pants, Derek doesn’t stop him. The kit gets them tangled around his knees, and huffs and growls, and finally collapses on top of his mattress panting.

Derek shuffles a little closer. “You want to let me help you?”

The kit stares at him narrowly.

Derek reaches slowly for the bottom hem of the tracksuit pants, resting against the sharp anklebone of the kit’s right foot. The kit bares his teeth but doesn’t make a sound as Derek closes his fingers around the fabric. He tugs gently, and the kit pulls his leg free.

“That’s it,” Derek tells him. “That’s how it’s done.”

With one leg free, the pants are easier for the kit to deal with. He shoves them off his left leg, then curls up in his blankets.

“Okay, so no pants for you,” Derek tells him, throwing the balled-up track pants toward the door. “Not until you can figure out how to work them, right?”

The kit huffs, and it sounds like agreement.

For lunch, Derek adds some chopped carrots to the kit’s chicken and rice.

The kit isn’t some dumb animal. After the first time he slurped down the sedative with his water, he learned. Now he sniffs his food and water warily, and grumbles at it. At last, anxious and unhappy, his stomach growling, the kit shoves the first handful of chicken and rice in his mouth. The rest of it follows quickly, the kit ravenous now he’s finally given into his hunger. Then, his belly full, the kit curls up in his blankets and regards Derek sleepily through his amber eyes.

“I don’t know,” Derek tells him. “This is a book about aesthetic theory in architecture. It’s not exactly bedtime reading.”

The kit makes a chuffing sound.

Derek starts to read a page, and then closes the book. “Actually, you know what? I’ll be back in a minute.”

He heads upstairs to the Cassie’s room and grabs a picture book off her shelf. The kit must be sick of staring at just four walls. Then he detours past his own bedroom to get a clean pair of track pants, and goes downstairs again.

When he opens the door, the kit is wary but doesn’t flinch back.

“So this one,” Derek says, showing the kit the cover of the book, “is about a little girl who goes for a walk in the woods. I think you might like this one. Lots of pictures.”

He sits on the end of the mattress, aware that he’s encroaching on the kit’s space. The kit frowns and grouses, but he doesn’t retreat to the corner. He’s wary and on edge, but he relaxes a little when Derek starts to read, and cranes his head to look at the pictures Derek shows him. Eventually he wriggles closer, and Derek’s heart skips a beat when he feels the kit’s bare thigh pressing up against his own. If he wanted, he could put an arm around those thin shoulders. Instead he keeps reading, and pointing out things in the pictures. The kit makes curious, contented noises, and Derek is suddenly glad for all those hours he’s spent reading to the kids in the pack.

He reads the picture book three times for the kit. By the time they’re halfway through the fourth read, the kit is curled up beside him, his head resting on Derek’s thigh. Derek drops his hand gently to the kit’s shorn scalp, ignoring the little warning growl he gets.

“You’re just stubborn,” Derek tells him with more certainty than he feels. “You’re a pack animal too, aren’t you? You like to be touched.”

The kit wrinkles his nose as Derek rubs his head softly, and doesn’t pull away. Eventually his large eyes close and he snuffles into sleep.

Derek keeps touching him.

This is not how he pictured his break from college.

He thought he’d come home for a few weeks, catch up with the pack, catch up on some recreation reading, and finally make some progress through his ever-expanding Netflix queue. He really didn’t think he’d be spending his days in a basement with a feral human, reading him stories and wondering how to toilet train him.

He looks down at the sleeping kit, and marvels at how much trust he’s somehow managed to build in three scant days that has the little animal practically sleeping in his lap. He knows a lot of it is instinct. The kit craves closeness, and Derek is really his only option, but he hopes that it’s more than that too. He hopes the kit isn’t just curled up like this because he has no other choice. He hopes that, deep down, the kit knows Derek would never hurt him.

 

 

***

 

It’s a Hale pack tradition on a Sunday afternoon for everyone to go to the lake. Picnic baskets are loaded, and kids are bundled up into their winter gear, and the pack sets off into the Preserve. Today, Derek doesn’t go. Instead he waits until he can no longer hear the pack, and goes downstairs to open the basement door.

The kit smells of anxiety. The scent of it is sharp, but it softens and dissipates as Derek opens the door. The kit appears from underneath his pile of blankets, looking between Derek’s face and his empty hands.

“Today you get lunch outside,” Derek tells him, and reaches down his hand for the kit.

The kit sniffs it and grumbles.

“Food outside,” Derek tells him. “But pants first.”

Over the past few days the kit has gotten used to Derek’s touch, but he’s not happy about being manhandled to his feet and then into pants. He snaps and snarls, but not too seriously, and when the pants are on he actually stops and watches as Derek shows him how to tug the waistband of the track pants up and down over his hips.

“See, it’s that simple,” Derek tells him. “Pants go up, pants go down.”

The kit hooks his thumbs over the waistband and shoves his pants down.

“And now up,” Derek tells him.

The kit glares, and tries to push the pants all the way off.

“No,” Derek says firmly. He tugs them back up. “Pants go up and stay up, and then you can have some food.”

 _Food_. The kit knows that word already. He looks at Derek’s hands again, frowning.

“Outside,” Derek tells him, and opens the basement door. “Come on.”

The kit shuffles after him, making suspicious chattering noises in his throat. Derek takes the stairs very slowly, stopping to check that the kit is still behind him. The kit is moving a lot better than he did a few days ago. He’s still careful not to put any weight on his hurt ankle, but he’s definitely in a lot less pain.

The kit falters when they reach the top of the stairs.

“It’s okay,” Derek tells him. “There’s nobody else here. Just us. And you want some food, yes?”

The kit’s eyes widen hopefully.

“Come on,” Derek says, and leads him to the kitchen.

The kit lifts his head and sniffs, and Derek wonders what he’s smelling. He’s pretty sure that human senses aren’t as sharp as werewolf senses, but he has a feeling that the kitchen is about to become the kit’s favorite room. There’s half a loaf of homemade bread sitting on the counter, and a bowl of fruit beside the sink, and several jars of cookies on the small kitchen table. This is probably heaven to the kit.

Derek opens the fridge and pulls out the container of chicken and rice. The kit moves closer, licking his lips.

“You have to let me heat it up first,” Derek tells him.

The kit whimpers as Derek peels the lid off the container, and bumps his head against Derek’s shoulder.

“None of that,” Derek tells him sternly. “You won’t like it as much if it’s cold.”

That’s probably a lie, but the kit’s not going to die of starvation in the thirty seconds it takes to heat his lunch. Not that anyone would believe it, by the heartbroken look of betrayal the kit gives him.

“Oh, stop that,” Derek tells him, spooning the food onto a plate. “You can wait a minute.”

The kit watches avidly as Derek microwaves his food. When the plate is warm, Derek sets it on the table and pulls a chair out. He gestures at the chair, and the kit stares at him.

“Like this,” Derek says, and pulls the opposite chair out. He sits.

The kit shuffles over to the table, looking between the chair, and Derek, and his food. He doesn’t sit on the chair. He squats down on his haunches, and reaches up onto the table for a handful of warm chicken and rice. He shoves it into his face.

“Close enough,” Derek tells him with a smile.

The kit pauses for a second, looks at him curiously, and then concentrates on shoveling food into his mouth. When he’s finished, he licks his palms clean. Then he stares hopefully at the empty plate.

“You can have more soon,” Derek promises. He stands up from the table and crosses to the kitchen door. He unlatches it, and pushes it open.

The kit stares, and Derek knows exactly what he’s seeing. Not the back porch, not the yard, not the chicken coop—although the kit’s gaze sharpens on that for a moment—but _freedom_. Derek can hear the way the kit’s heartbeat quickens, and he thrums with nervous energy.

Derek wants the kit to go outside. He wants him to be uncaged. But he also wants him to know that he lives in the house now, and that even if he goes outside he has to come back to the house; to warmth, and safety and food.

Derek returns to the table, keeping himself between the kit and the door in case the kit tries to make a sudden break. He takes an oatmeal cookie from one of the cookie jars and holds it out to the kit. The kit opens his mouth for it, and then closes his teeth around it.

“That’s good, right?” Derek says. “Aunt Amy makes them. She makes the best cookies in Beacon Hills. Cupcakes and pastries too, but we don’t want to give you too much of a sweet tooth, right?”

The kit makes a rumbling noise in his throat that Derek pretends is agreement. He chews the cookie, heedless of the shower of crumbs, and his gaze flicks from Derek to the door and back again.

Derek reaches out and rubs the kit’s head. The kit nuzzles into his touch a little, but he’s still looking at the open door.

Derek takes another cookie from the jar. He walks over to the kitchen door and steps through it. The day is cold, the air clean and sharp. Derek lifts his nose. He can smell pine needles, faint smoke from a distant campfire, the chickens in the coop and, underneath all that, the musk of foxes. That particular scent is already fading, already old. The foxes have moved on. Derek feels a mixture of relief and guilt and sadness rise up in him. He wonders if the kit knows the foxes have abandoned him.

The kit follows him through the door, gaze fixed on the cookie.

Derek steps off the porch and down onto the ground.

The kit follows, twitching anxiously.

Derek breaks off a piece of the cookie and rewards him with it. He wants to keep the kit’s focus on him while he slowly reintroduces him to the outside world. He wants the kit to _choose_ to stay, and if that means bribery for now, well, Derek’s okay with that. He’s conscious of the fact that he only has two weeks before he has to go back to Stanford. Two weeks to convince the kit that the house is safe, that it’s _home_.

The kit is distracted by the chickens, and limps toward the coop. He turns his head to check that Derek’s following him, and Derek shows him a smile.

“These are Aunt Clare’s chickens,” he tells the kit. “We do not break in and eat them, okay?”

Not without first plucking them and roasting them, at least.

The kit makes a chirping noise, and hunkers down outside the coop. He curls his long fingers through the wire, staring narrow-eyed at the oblivious chickens. He tugs at the wire.

“Not food,” Derek tells him. “ _No_.”

He really doesn’t like the way the kit licks his lips.

After a while, the kit stands up again and starts tugging at the waistband of his track pants. Derek tries not to laugh as he almost trips himself up.

“Okay, that’s good,” he says, when the reason for the kit’s sudden urge to unclothe himself becomes apparent. “We’ll talk about finding more appropriate places to pee later on, because you probably shouldn’t pee _on_ the chickens.”

The unfortunate birds in question cluck and squawk and generally voice their displeasure.

The kit isn’t done. He squats down over a pile of leaves, and, okay, gross, but at least Derek won’t have to clean the basement floor, right? He’s going to count this as a win.

“Good,” he tells the kit, and rewards him with another piece of cookie.

He backs up toward the house again, holding the rest of the cookie out, and the kit follows him. When they’re back inside the kitchen, Derek closes and latches the door. The kit doesn’t seem to mind. He accepts the rest of the cookie and lets Derek rub his head. He makes a sound in his throat that’s almost like a purr.

Derek coaxes him back to the basement with an apple, and he’s pleased when the kit goes straight to his mattress and burrows down into his blankets.

“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He reaches down and rubs the kit’s head again, and the kit nuzzles into his palm. “Sleep well, little kit.”

The kit curls up, holding the apple close to his chest.

 

***

 

In the middle of the night Derek is woken by the scream of a fox.

No, the _kit_.

He stumbles out of bed and into the hallway. There are lights coming on in most of the bedrooms. Doors open and close. Jacob starts wailing.

“Der?” Laura asks, shuffling toward Jacob’s room.

“I’ve got it,” he mumbles. “I’m on it.”

The kit screams again.

“Mommy?” Sarah cries out from the twins' room. “Mommy!”

Derek scrubs his hands over his face. Jesus. The kit’s got the entire household awake, and all the kids freaking out.

“Put a muzzle on your puppy, Derek!” Malia calls out as he passes her door.

Derek ignores his cousin and hurries downstairs. He flips the light in the basement stairwell, and pulls the door open as soon as he gets to it. The kit is backed into the corner, huddled over.

The sudden smell of blood is sharp.

“Hey,” Derek says. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”

He really wishes the kit could answer.

The kit whines and whimpers, and lifts his tear-stained face toward Derek.

“Come here,” Derek says, sitting down heavily on the mattress. The kit scrambles toward him, whimpering. His hands are bloody. “What’d you do? It’s okay, come here.”

The kit burrows into Derek’s lap, and wedges his face under Derek’s arm. Derek rubs his back until his trembling begins to subside, and reaches out to pull a blanket around both of them.

He notices, for the first time, the back of the door. It’s streaked with blood, and Derek’s stomach twists as he pictures the kit scrabbling at it so hard that his fingers bled.

At first he’s horrified because he’s convinced it’s his fault. He showed the kit a glimpse of freedom before he was ready. But then he realizes it’s his fault in an entirely unexpected way. The kit wasn’t trying to claw his way to freedom. If he had been, he wouldn’t have settled down so quickly in Derek’s embrace.

It wasn’t his freedom he was screaming for.

It was Derek.


	4. Chapter 4

 

Derek wakes up when the basement door opens. He tightens his grip of the kit instinctively, and the kit snuffles in his sleep, his face pressed against Derek’s chest.

“Breakfast,” Talia says quietly.

Derek can’t believe he slept through the sounds of everyone getting up and getting ready for work and school. “Mmm. Sorry about last night.”

“It’s not your fault,” Talia says. Her gaze lingers on the kit. “It’s not his fault, either. I called Deaton. He’ll be over soon.”

Derek nods and yawns.

Talia closes the door gently.

Derek carefully unhooks the kit’s left hand from where it’s tangled in his shirt, and lifts it so he can see it. The kit’s fingers are cut and swollen, his skin stained rust-colored with dried blood. At least two of his fingernails are ripped, the nail beds exposed. The kit makes a muttering noise in his throat, and Derek sets his hand down against his chest. The kit curls his fingers tightly in Derek’s shirt again.

Derek closes his eyes and listens to the sound of the kit’s heartbeat, thumping against his own.

He dozes. When he wakes up again, the kit is blinking up at him, amber eyes wide.

“Good morning,” Derek murmurs.

The kit makes an answering noise, and rubs his cheek against Derek’s chest.

“Breakfast,” Derek tell him. “Food.”

The kit scrambles eagerly to his feet, looking between Derek and the basement door.

Derek climbs to his feet and holds out his hand.

The kit looks at it.

“Here,” Derek says, and steps closer. He wraps his fingers gently around the kit’s injured hand. The kit makes a face, but lets it happen.

Derek leads him slowly up the stairs.

Any progress Derek has been making with the kit gets thrown out the window the second the kit sees Deaton seated at the small kitchen table. He wrenches his hand from Derek’s, growling and showing his canines, and glaring at the vet.

“His breakfast is in the microwave,” Deaton says mildly, keeping his gaze off the kit. “I’ve already put the sedative in.”

Derek hates himself a little for this, but it’s necessary. The kit obviously won’t let Deaton inspect his injuries freely.

“Food,” he says to the kit.

The kit growls again and give a short, unhappy yip.

“Food,” Derek repeats, taking the plate out of the microwave and setting it down on the floor for the kit.

The kit hunkers down, glaring. His hunger wins out over his suspicion.

He eats.

Then, when the drowsiness hits him, he whines, distressed, and then growls and turns his baleful face to Deaton and Derek. He looks so fierce and wild that Derek almost takes a step back, before he remembers that he could snap the kit’s spine without even breaking a sweat.

“It’s okay,” he says.

The kit glares, then stumbles, and lands on his ass on the kitchen floor. Derek sits down with him, and the kit crawls into his lap, still growling.

“Well, we wouldn’t have to do this,” Derek tells him softly, “if you knew how to behave.”

The kit grumbles and huffs, his breath hot against Derek’s throat.

“It’s a low dosage,” Deaton says, standing up at last and fetching his bag. “Enough to make him drowsy, but he’ll still be awake. It might be less frightening for him if he remembers what happens.”

Derek hopes so. He rubs a hand up and down the kit’s trembling spine.

It’s a little hard to figure out the best way for Deaton to examine the kit. In the end, the vet crouches behind Derek and gently tugs one of the kit’s arms out from under Derek’s arm. The kit tries to pull it back, but Derek brings his elbow down and clamps it in place.

“It’s okay,” he tells the kit, and wishes he could see what Deaton was doing. “You’re okay.”

The kit snuffles unhappily against his throat.

“All right,” Deaton says at last, and Derek releases the pressure on the kit’s arm. The kit pulls it back immediately, glaring at the tape on his fingers. “Let’s have the next one.”

The kit struggles for a few seconds, then seems to realize the futility of that. He huffs and sags heavily against Derek’s chest, whining a little.

“It’s okay,” Derek tells him, and gently eases the kit’s hand out of his mouth. “Don’t chew your tape, or Dr. Deaton will have to get you one of those big plastic cones, and that’ll just look stupid.”

The kit grumbles.

Behind him, Derek hears Deaton chuff. “And that’s his other hand done. How’s the ankle?”

Derek lets the kit burrow against him, both hands tucked safely between them where the vet can’t get to them. “Good, I think. Getting better, anyway.”

Deaton moves back around in front of him, and sits down at the table again. He studies the kit for a moment. “You’re doing very well with him. I hadn’t expected him to take so quickly to wearing clothes.”

Derek rubs a hand over the kit’s scalp proudly. “He’s a quick learner.”

Deaton smiles. “I think you should take some credit yourself. He obviously trusts you.”

“We’re getting there,” Derek says.

“And how’s it going with the toilet training?”

Derek wrinkles up his nose. “We’re getting there. Slowly.”

The kit grumbles again, and Derek pats him gently on the back.

“Well, then,” Deaton says, his smile growing. He reaches into his bag, and brings out a packet. Derek recognizes it from the organic store in town. Chocolate. “I always have something set aside for my favorite patients when they’ve been good. This one’s a special case, of course. No dog chews for him.”

He gets up from the table and crouches down beside them. He rips open the packet and takes a piece of chocolate out. The kit lifts his head and sniffs, unfocussed eyes blinking.

“No biting,” Derek tells him as Deaton holds the chocolate close to his face.

The kit opens his mouth and Deaton pops the piece of chocolate inside. The kit tries to snap his teeth, but the sedative has made him too slow. Then he’s distracted by the taste of the chocolate, and drops his head back down on Derek’s shoulder. He makes little noises as he chews, both pleasurable and cranky. He likes the taste of the chocolate, Derek guesses, but he’s unhappy he didn’t get the chance to bite the vet. Stubborn little animal.

“I want to check on him every two weeks,” Deaton says. “To keep an eye on his weight, and his health in general. Obviously if you have any specific concerns, or if he injures himself again, I’ll come out whenever I’m needed. For now though, I think he’s doing just fine.” Deaton stands and wipes his hands on his trousers. “Do you need a hand up?”

“I’ve got it,” Derek says. It’s awkward, but the kit is light, and clings to Derek like a monkey once he realizes they’re shifting. Derek manages to get one hand on the kitchen counter to pull himself up. The kit wraps his arms around Derek’s neck, and his legs around Derek’s hips. He buries his face against Derek’s throat.

Deaton smiles again. “Yes, I believe you do.”

 

***

 

When Deaton goes, Derek thinks about returning the kit to the basement. Then he remembers he hasn’t checked his email in days, and his friends from school might think he’s dropped off the face of the planet. He carries the kit upstairs instead, and sets him down on his bed. The kit immediately curls up, dragging Derek’s blankets and comforter and pillows into a nest around him.

Derek sits at his desk and starts up his computer.

He discovers he has a new email from his older brother Patrick. Patrick is studying journalism at NYU, and didn’t come home for the break. He’s spending it with his girlfriend’s pack instead, in New Zealand. The photos he sends are stunning. Derek writes back that he’s having his usual boring break, loving spending time with the pack while at the same time they’re driving him mad. He doesn’t mention the kit, because he’s not sure how to. It’s only been a week, and Derek is already so used to the kit’s presence that it’s hard to remember that the kit is meant to be as impossible as aliens, or Yetis, or unicorns.

He has a few emails from friends at school, looking forward to catching up when they’re all back at Stanford. There are a couple of group emails too, sorting out a place and a time to meet after the break for drinks and pizza. Derek glances over at the kit sleeping on his bed and doesn’t reply.

He gets up and goes downstairs to fix himself a late breakfast. He finds his mom already there, Jacob on her hip, and Cassie perched at the table with a sandwich and a glass of milk.

Talia was a lawyer before she became alpha of the Hale pack. She works from home now. It’s a fulltime job being alpha, and sorting out everything from the pack’s finances and investments to petty disputes and the occasional territorial issue with other packs. To say nothing of all the unpaid childcare she does for Laura. Derek doesn’t understand half of what his mother deals with, and he’s glad. Derek’s not alpha material, and he’s always known it. Laura will be the next alpha, and she’ll be as brilliant at it as Talia is.

Talia is currently making Jacob a sandwich.

Derek fetches the highchair from the dining room, and helps strap Jacob in. He waits until Talia passes Jacob his sandwich, and then she gives him a questioning look.

“I don’t think I want to go back to Stanford yet,” he blurts out. The idea was only half-formed, but now it’s out there, he knows it’s true. “I could defer for the semester.”

“Because of the human?” Talia asks gently.

There’s no point denying it. “He needs me. And two weeks aren’t enough.”

Talia is silent for a moment, and then she nods. “Okay.”

 _Okay?_ Derek had expected to at least have to defend his position a little. “Really?”

“Really,” Talia smiles.

“And you’re okay with that?” Derek asks.

Talia raises her eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t I be okay with it?”

“Um, because when Patrick wanted to defer for a year, you told him you’d throw him out of the pack first?”

Talia puts the butter back in the fridge. “When Patrick wanted to defer, that was because he thought it was a smart idea to follow a rock band around the country. And they weren’t even a good rock band!”

“They were pretty terrible,” Derek agrees with a smile. “So this is really okay with you?”

Talia pulls him forward into a hug. “Yes, Derek, this is really okay with me.”

Derek hugs her back, relieved.

 

***

 

That afternoon, Derek shows the kit the toilet.

The kit stares at it, then stares at Derek, and gives him a look that Derek is sure translates exactly as: _What the fuck is this shit?_ Since the kit has just slurped down half a cup of water that Derek held for him, he knows it’s a waiting game.

There are six bathrooms in the house, and this one is at the end of the hall on the second floor. It’s closest to Derek’s bedroom. It’s also one of the smallest bathrooms in the house, so it really only tends to be used by Derek, and by Patrick when he’s home, and sometimes Alex and Matty. It has a toilet, a shower stall, and a basin with a tiny cabinet underneath. Apparently the lighting is _terrible_ , so the more fashion-conscious members of the pack—everyone except Derek, really—find that it doesn’t suit their needs. Derek has no problem commandeering it for the kit’s use. He even tapes a sign on the door: _Private._ _Do not use._ There’s nothing like a sign like that to cause dissention in a pack, but Derek’s already run it past his mom, and Talia agreed with him. The last thing the kit needs is for people to burst in on him.

“It’s a toilet,” Derek tells him. “And today our mission is to get you to use it.”

The kit looks speculatively at the water in the bowl.

“No,” Derek tells him firmly, and shows him how to use the basin instead. The kit is fascinated by the taps, pushing them on and off with the heels of his hands and making water spurt in the basin. Aunt Clare, on her conservation kick, is going to kill Derek for wasting water if she finds out. Then the kit leans over the basin and tries to jam his head under the tap for another drink.

“No,” Derek tells him, and draws him back gently. He takes a plastic cup and holds it under the water. He fills it halfway, then turns the tap off. He passes the cup to the kit.

The kit fumbles with it and drops it.

Water spills all over the floor.

Derek picks the cup up and fills it again. He hands it to the kit again.

This time the kit wraps his taped fingers more carefully around the cup, and lifts it to his face.

Such a foreign act for him, Derek realizes. In the wild, animals bend and curl toward water, not the other way around. This is a big step.

The kit takes a slurp, and water runs out either side of the cup and down his face and neck. He splutters a little in surprise until he learns to control the flow, and then holds the cup out to Derek. His eyes are bright.

“You,” Derek tells him, setting the cup back down on the basin, “are just about the smartest thing in the world, aren’t you?”

The kit makes a happy chattering noise and plays with the taps some more. He seems fascinated as to where the water goes, and Derek grabs him by the wrist to stop him from getting his fingers jammed in the drain.

“Toilet,” he tells the kit again, drawing him over to it and tugging at the waistband of his track pants.

The kit shoves the track pants down to his knees and looks at Derek.

Derek gives him an approving nod. “And I suppose it’s too much to ask you to aim?”

It really is, but Derek manages to hold the kit by the hips and direct him in the general area of the toilet bowl. He cleans the resultant mess up with toilet paper, and then shows the kit how to flush the toilet.

The kit leaps back in surprise when the toilet gurgles, and Derek laughs.

The kit makes an excited chattering sound, eyes bright, and mouth wide, and Derek figures that’s a laugh as well.

“Clever little thing,” he tells the kit, and rubs his head.

The kit rumbles happily.

 

***

 

That night, Derek sits and eats dinner with the kit in the basement. There is talking and laughter and the scrape of chairs from the dining room, and the kit tilts his head, more curious than wary.

“That’s my pack,” Derek tells him. “Your pack too, now.”

Humans don’t have packs, not in the way that wolves do, but Derek figures the kit has been living with foxes so it’s a dynamic he will understand when he meets everyone.

The kit listens, and makes a rumbling sound almost like a purr. Then he looks hopefully at Derek’s half-finished plate of chicken and rice. It was only fair to eat the same as the kit. Derek smiles and shoves the plate toward him.

After dinner they make a trip upstairs to the bathroom, and Derek tries not to be too weirded out when the kit watches him pee. After all, it’s a good way to learn.

The kit flushes the toilet three times when he finishes, chattering happily.

On the way back downstairs they meet Laura, Jacob on her hip. The kit growls and flattens himself back against the wall, behind Derek.

“It’s okay,” Derek tells him, and curls his fingers around the kit’s wrist. “This is Laura, and Jacob.”

Jacob gums his fist.

“Hello,” Laura says. She holds her hand out to let the kit sniff it. Then she stifles a laugh as the kit licks her palm. “Oh, well I guess our dinner was nicer than yours!”

“He thinks with his stomach,” Derek says, petting the kit on the head.

“I see that.”

The kit crowds into Derek until Laura and Jacob ascend the steps.

“Pack,” Derek tell him. “Our pack.”

The kit huffs, and follows him down to the basement.

Derek settles down onto the mattress with the picture book, and the kit curls up next to him. The kit falls asleep first, snuffling against Derek’s chest. Derek curls an arm around him and strokes the nape of his neck, and listens to the sounds he makes in his sleep.

 


	5. Chapter 5

The kit loves showering. Derek is at first surprised, and then relieved, and then annoyed. The kit loves showering so much that he doesn't want to get out again, and growls and huffs and refuses to move until Derek has to reach in and turn the water off, then try to haul him out. It’s an accident the first time the kit knocks the taps and drenches Derek in freezing water. Derek’s pretty sure it’s not an accident the second time, or the time after that.

Not by the way the kit chatters and yips, his eyes bright with laughter.

“You are a monster,” Derek tells him.

The kit chuffs at him, and lets Derek wrap him in a big fluffy towel.

Taking the pieces of tape off his fingers is an interesting experience. They’ve softened from the shower, and Derek cuts them with a pair of nail scissors. He makes sure he keeps talking to the kit the entire time so that he doesn’t feel threatened. If anything, the kit is curious. He keeps trying to pull his hand back or duck his head to see what Derek’s doing, and Derek’s afraid he’ll slip and cut the kit’s fingers.

“If you hold still,” he tells the kit, “you’ll get food.”

The kit looks around the bathroom hopefully.

“Not yet,” Derek chides him gently. “When we’re finished here.”

The kit is surprising patient and malleable as Derek peels the tape off.

His fingers are still red and angry in places, but there’s no sign of infection, and Deaton said it was time for the tape to come off. The kit checks his fingers, and huffs, and then flushes the toilet a few times just to amuse himself.

Aunt Clare is really going to have a fit when the water bill comes in.

There’s a knock at the door. “Derek?”

It’s Alex. “I’m busy, Alex.”

“I need the bathroom and all the others are full!”

“All of them?”

“Yeeeesss!”

Derek sighs. “Come in then.”

Alex opens the door warily, and sees the kit pressing up anxiously against Derek’s back. “H-hey. Thanks.”

“Just a second,” Derek says, and reaches out and tugs his brother into a hug. “I’m gonna let him see me scent you, okay?”

“I really need to pee, Der!”

Derek ignores him and rests his face in the crook of his neck. Alex smells like Twizzlers and fries and cheap nail polish remover. Derek nuzzles against him for a moment, and Alex sighs and lifts his chin.

“What color?” Derek asks.

“What?”

“Your nail polish.”

He can feel Alex’s skin heat. “Kind of a candy pink.”

“Pretty,” Derek tells him. “You should leave it on next time.”

Alex wrinkles his nose.

He’s had a hard time since puberty hit, because even though Alex is a boy his wolf is not. It didn’t matter so much when he was younger, but with his wolf growing stronger when his first heat hit him, it’s been a difficult year for him. It’s an unusual duality, and the pack has been as supportive as possible, but Alex still takes some shit at school for being different. Around full moon, when the pull of his wolf is the strongest, Alex sometimes wears nail polish and borrows Malia’s blouses. They don’t fit him well, and Malia doesn’t exactly have a lot of pretty clothes, at least not the sort Alex likes. Derek had intended to take him shopping during his break to get some nice clothes for himself, but that was before the kit turned up. Maybe they could get something online.

Behind Derek, the kit growls softly.

Alex tenses. “Der?”

“He’s okay,” Derek says. “He’s gotta learn to share.”

“Great,” Alex mutters. “I’ll just wait for him to rip my throat out, shall I?”

Derek laughs and curls his hand around the back of Alex’s neck. “He’s squishy and breakable and he doesn’t have fangs. You’re a _wolf_ , Alex.”

“Easy for you to say,” Alex tells him. “He’s looking at me like he’s going to murder me in my sleep.”

Derek steps back and reaches down for Alex’s hand. He draws his brother’s arm out straight and holds it toward the kit.

The kit snuffles at Alex’s curled fingers carefully. Then he sniffs his wrist. He growls again, but the sound is more questioning than hostile, and he looks worriedly at Derek.

“This is Alex,” Derek says. “Pack.”

The kit snuffles at Alex’s wrist again, then huddles back behind Derek and chatters to himself.

“Can I pee now?” Alex asks. “Please?”

“Go for it,” Derek says, and tugs the kit out of the bathroom.

The kit twists to look back at Alex, scowling and whining when he realizes Alex is about to use the toilet, and the kit won’t get a chance to flush it for him. He glares at Derek like he’s just stolen Christmas.

Derek sighs, and figures he can distract him with a cookie.

Of course it works.

 

***

 

The first time Derek takes the kit out into the Preserve, beyond the boundaries of the yard, the kit is nervous. He yips hopefully a few times, and listens for the foxes to answer, and whimpers when they don’t. Derek tries to distract him with oatmeal cookies, but the kit is clearly upset. His eyes fill with tears as he calls out mournfully, and for a moment Derek regrets bringing him out here at all.

They follow the path of the dry creek bed. The kit’s ankle is still a little swollen, but not enough to slow him down by much. He keeps lifting his head and sniffing, trying to catch the scent of the foxes, but Derek knows it’s long gone.

“I’m sorry,” he tells the kit quietly, “but you didn’t belong with them.”

The kit whines.

The kit leads him to the remains of the foxes’ den, the entrance hidden in the roots of a sprawling oak. The kit yips again, something hopeful in his tone, but Derek knows the foxes have moved on. Even now, crouched down outside the entrance to the den, he can barely smell them.

The kit scrambles inside. Derek is too broad across the shoulders to follow him.

He hunkers down outside, tearing up a dry leaf as he listens to the kit call for the foxes.

“They’re gone,” Derek tells him. “Come on back outside.”

The kit whimpers and chuffs.

“They’re gone,” Derek repeats. “Come on, I have food.”

Even the promise of food isn’t enough to make the kit cheer up. He crawls backward out of the den, covered in dirt and dead leaves. He sits down on the cold ground beside Derek and stares at him with his ridiculously wide eyes, as if asking where his pack has gone.

Derek passes him an oatmeal cookie.

The kit opens his mouth to take it. He bites into it, and half of it drops onto the ground. The kit unclenches his fists to search for it amid the leaf litter, and Derek notices that he was holding something.

He reaches to pick it up and inspect it.

The kit snarls suddenly, teeth bared, eyes narrowed. He’s up on his haunches, in a position to attack. The abruptness of it surprises Derek, and he pulls his hand back. The kit watches him warily for a moment, then settles back down beside him to finish his cookie. Whatever treasure he reclaimed from inside the den is hidden deliberately under his foot.

“Okay,” Derek says. “I get it. What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is also yours.”

The kit chuffs at him.

When they head back to the house, Derek sees that, whatever it is, the kit is clutching it tightly in his fist.

 

***

 

Derek has taken to leaving the basement door open, so that the kit can leave the room if he wants. When the pack is home, the kit generally stays in his nest of blankets. But as soon as he hears the house empty, or as soon as everyone is in bed, the kit is usually up and about. The kitchen is his first point of call, every time. He’s figured out how to pry the lids off the cookie jars, so of course it is. He can also open the fridge, although he has trouble opening the container that holds his meals. He’s overcome the problem by dropping the container on the floor so that it pops open, then grabbing as much of the ensuing mess as he can before Derek can clean it up.

He’s smart. Derek will give him that.

The kit also likes spending time in the living room. On the couch, specifically. There are lots of blankets and cushions on the couch, and the kit loves them. He likes getting so tangled up that he can’t extricate himself, and it’s up to Derek to do it for him.

“You’re an idiot,” Derek tells him fondly, every time.

This evening though, the kit doesn’t want to go to the kitchen or the living room. He’s anxious still, and on edge, and he wants the reassuring familiarity of his mattress and his blankets in the basement. Derek follows him down and pretends not to notice when he very obviously hides whatever treasure he reclaimed from the den under his mattress.

The kit checks it’s still there every few hours.

He huddles close to Derek in the meantime, seeking comfort. Even when the noises in the dining room fade, and, hours later, the television is turned off and the last of the adults climb the creaking steps to their bedrooms, the kit doesn’t move. Derek rubs his back and the kit nuzzles his face against Derek’s chest.

Derek waits until he’s asleep before he pulls the kit's treasure out and inspects it. It looks a little like the sort of dog tags that soldiers wear. The metal disc is snapped in half though, and ingrained with mud. There’s a hole in it for a chain, but the chain is long gone.

Derek takes it upstairs  and scrubs it clean in the kitchen sink. On one side there’s an official crest or logo that Derek doesn’t recognize. On the other side there are letters on it, in block capitals. They’re almost entirely worn away. Derek can make out STIL. If it was part of a longer word, it’s been lost where the tag is snapped.

He has no idea what he’s looking at.

On the way back to the basement, Derek sees a crack of light from under the library door, and wonders if his mother’s still awake. He heads down the hall and knocks on the door before opening it.

Peter’s sitting on the couch, a book open on his lap.

“Hey,” Derek says.

“Hey.” Peter stretches. “I thought you and your little shadow were asleep.” He squints at the clock on the mantle. “Holy shit, is that the time?”

Derek sits down next to him. “Do you know what this is?”

Peter takes the tag and turns it over in his palm. “I’m not sure. Hold on a second.”

He gets up and goes to the nearest bookshelf. He runs his fingers along the spines of the books until he finds the one he wants. He takes it and opens it, flicking through the pages. “Yes. Here it is.”

He crosses back to the couch and shows Derek the page.

Derek looks at the picture of the crest.

“Back before their apparent extinction, humans were registered with government departments,” Peter says. “Different tags for different states, but your little human has somehow gotten his paws on a Californian registration tag. You see them for sale sometimes as collectables. The last one would have been made about forty years ago, so it’s certainly not his.”

Not his, Derek thinks, but it’s something precious to him.

“What are these letters?”

“That’s the surname,” Peter says. “One side of the tag had the department crest and the other side had the ID number and the name. It’s a shame the number’s gone, or there might have been someplace to look it up and find out who it belonged to.”

“What happened to all the humans who were registered?” Derek asks.

Peter shrugs, and closes the book. “I don’t know. They stopped breeding, I suppose, or were stopped, and they just died out. Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid.”

Peter teaches art history at Stanford, which is the main reason Derek never took art history. He deals with Peter’s acerbic personality enough, without having him grade his papers the same way. Against all odds, however, Peter is a popular professor. Derek can only presume all art history students are masochists.

He sighs. “Doesn’t it ever feel weird to you that everything you teach, all that art, was all made by humans?”

Peter tilts his head slightly. “Why would it feel weird? We evolved from them, Derek. Several hundred years ago, the Hales were probably humans. Human history is also _our_ history. You say it like it’s cultural appropriation, but it’s not, not when it’s natural selection. They were weaker, and they died out.”

Derek almost laughs. “There’s one downstairs right now!”

“An anomaly,” Peter says gently. “A curiosity. A _footnote_.”

It’s the truth, probably, and it hurts. The kit might be the last human being alive on the planet.

It’s Peter’s turn to sigh. “Look, everything is fleeting, Derek, _everything_.” He goes to the shelf again, and selects a different book this time. He opens it, and sits down next to Derek. He places the book on Derek’s lap. “Tell me what you see.”

Even Derek knows this one. The swirls of blue, the twisted trees, the little village set out below a shifting, wondrous sky. “It’s Van Gogh’s _Starry Night_.”

“Good,” Peter says, a smile tugging the corners of his mouth. “Now, I can talk for more hours than anyone is remotely comfortable with about the composition, and the symbolism, the hallucinatory nature of the painting and the artist’s own erratic mental state when he painted it, or whether or not he had any knowledge of spiral galaxies, but do you know what I _actually_ see, Derek?”

Derek shakes his head.

“I see loss,” Peter says. “I see genius beyond my imagination, but it’s so very, very ephemeral. History isn’t just the study of the past, Derek, it’s a memorial to the things that we’ve lost and will never have again. We will never have a Van Gogh again. We will never have a Da Vinci, or a Rodin, or a Picasso again, because history is relentless. We are beyond blessed that some people are able to leave their mark, but most of us, Derek, are swept up in the tide and washed clean away. Don’t spend your life mourning that. Or, if you’re going to, at least remember to mourn yourself a little too.”

Derek closes the art book.

Peter leans back on the couch.

“Hell, Peter,” Derek says at last. “That’s the worst pep talk anyone’s ever given me.”

Peter shrugs and smiles slightly. “I may have had a few drinks.”

“You are the literal worst.”

“Eh.” Peter shrugs. “I also spend an hour on the phone to Patricia.”

Derek winces in sympathy. Peter’s ex-wife is not a pleasant woman. She’s sharp, and sarcastic, and has a cruel streak a mile long. Really, she and Peter should have been a match made in heaven.

“How did that go?” he asks.

“About the same as always,” Peter sighs. Then he smiles, and claps Derek on the shoulder. “It’s way past my bedtime.”

“Yeah. Mine too.” Derek takes the tag back, and closes his fist around it. The sharp edges dig into his palm. “I need to put this back before he misses it.”

 

***

 

The kit snuffles into wakefulness as Derek slides the tag back under the mattress. He blinks in Derek’s direction in the darkness, blind.

“Hey,” Derek says, and thinks of the letters on the tag. STIL. “Hey, Stiles. It's okay. I'm here.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

Stiles is wary as he follows Derek up the stairs. Derek is lugging all of the blankets with him.

“I’m sick of spending all my time in the basement,” he says over his shoulder, and Stiles makes a questioning sound. “So now that you can actually use the bathroom _and_ keep your pants on, we’re moving to my bedroom. It’s nicer there.”

Giving the kit a name has somehow changed their dynamic. Before, the kit was a little wild animal, but now he’s something more. Not quite human, not quite yet, but he’s an individual, with a personality that’s growing every day. A stubborn, smart, cheeky individual, who, despite the limitations of his communication skills, still finds a way to make himself understood.

He’s doing it now, grumbling and muttering at Derek as he thumps up the stairs after him.

Derek dumps the blankets on his bed, and gestures at them. “Here,” he says. “This is where we’re sleeping from now. In a nice bed, in a nice room, with windows and decent heating and, most importantly, my laptop.”

Stiles huffs at him, then slams Cassie’s picture book on the bed.

 _Fine_ , his gesture says as clearly as any words could, _but I’m not happy about it!_

“Stiles,” Derek says, softening his tone, “come here, you cranky little thing.”

Stiles plays hard to get for all of five seconds, before he launches himself at Derek for a hug. He snuffles and rumbles as Derek scents him.

“This is where we’re sleeping now,” Derek repeats.

When Stiles slinks back to the basement to fetch his tag, Derek’s not surprised. He pretends not to watch as Stiles slips the tag under the mattress of his bed. At least this means that Stiles has realized they’re not sleeping in the basement anymore.

Derek had hoped to go over some of his course reading. Just because he’s deferring for a semester doesn’t mean he wants to forget everything he’s learned in the past few years. He sits at his desk in front of his laptop, and Stiles sits on the bed with the picture book, and for almost three whole minutes they each read in companionable silence. Then Stiles gets interested in Derek’s laptop, and comes to inspect what he’s doing.

“No, we don’t just push buttons,” Derek tells him.

Too late.

Stiles blinks at the screen as a music video starts. He chatters excitedly at Derek, clearly astonished that there are tiny people living there in his laptop, and Derek laughs.

“Come on,” he says, and carries his laptop over to his bed. “If we’re going to waste the day watching videos, we might as well get comfortable.”

Cassie finds them at lunchtime. She comes bearing a plate of sandwiches. “Grandma says these are for you.”

Derek looks at the plate. Several of the sandwiches are suspiciously missing Cassie-sized bites. He takes the plate anyway.

Stiles looks warily at Cassie for a moment, but is easily distracted by the sandwiches.

“Use your hands,” Derek tells him, pulling the plate away before Stiles can put his face in it.

Stiles grumbles, but picks up a sandwich with his hands.

“He’s messy,” Cassie says. “Are you watching Dora?”

Derek sighs and makes room for her on the bed. “We can watch Dora.”

Stiles turns out to be a Dora the Explorer fan.

 

***

 

Derek waits until the pack is already eating before he takes Stiles by the hand and encourages him downstairs. Stiles chatters nervously.

“It’s okay,” Derek tells him. “You meet the pack, and then there’s food.”

 _Food_. Derek can almost see the gears turning over in Stiles’s head.

“And one day,” Derek tells him, “I won’t need to bribe you at all, will I?”

Stiles wrinkles his nose.

“You need to meet the pack, Stiles,” Derek tells him.

It’s been close to two weeks, and it’s time to socialize him. Mostly because Derek wants to integrate Stiles into the pack a little. It would be nice if Stiles was happy spending some time with some of the others. Derek cares for him, but he could use some space occasionally, even if it was just an hour or two a day. And he wants Stiles to grow and learn, to be more independent. He won’t do that if he’ll never leave Derek’s side.

Derek’s usual chair is empty. Another one has been pushed in beside it. Derek figures that he’ll put Stiles between him and Laura. Stiles has met Laura, and licked her hand, and wasn’t openly hostile, which Derek takes as a good sign the kit likes his sister.

He’d expected Stiles to growl and posture when they walked into the dining room. Instead, Stiles goes shy, and clings to Derek’s back and grumbles at him.

“It’s okay,” Derek says, peeling him off gently. “We’re gonna have some food, okay?”

He draws Stiles to the table, and they sit.

Stiles starts off on his own chair, but inches so close to Derek that he’s pretty much sitting in his lap by the time the salad bowl reaches them.

Derek serves him up some salad. Stiles lowers his head to sniff at it warily, and makes a face. He’s much happier when the meatloaf reaches them. He wriggles and watches carefully as Derek stabs a slice with his fork and puts it on a plate for him. He yips when Derek adds a second slice, then tries to grab the serving dish when Derek passes it along to Aunt Amy.

“No,” Derek says firmly, aware that everyone is watching. “Eat what’s there first.”

Down the table, Matty giggles.

Stiles huffs, and picks up his meatloaf.

“Ew! He’s eating with his hands!” Nate exclaims.

Kaylee, his mom, shushes him.

“This time last week, he would have had his face in his plate,” Derek says.

Nate looks both delighted and appalled.

At the head of the table, Talia is watching them with a smile.

It’s good to eat with the pack again, and find out how everyone is doing.

James, Derek’s dad, has taken on an order to build a dining setting for a pack out of Arizona. The table has to seat fifty, so it’s going to be tricky to source timber that’s the right size for the job. But as long as the Arizona pack is willing to pay for it, James is happy to take the work.

“Talia says you’re deferring this semester,” William, Talia’s youngest brother, says to Derek.

Derek flushes a little. It was William who first got him interested in architecture, and he’s promised Derek a place at his firm when he graduates. Derek didn’t even think about how deferring was going to throw those plans out. “Sorry, I should have run it by you too, I guess.”

William makes a dismissive gesture. “It’s fine. Just as long as I can still pick your brains about designs in the meantime.”

“Of course.” Derek lets the kit steal a piece of his meatloaf.

Across the table, Cora and Malia are talking about something that happened at school today. Stiles keeps throwing Cora narrow-eyed glances, so Derek guesses he remembers exactly how they met. It turns out that Malia is in trouble for something rude she wrote in an assignment, and not happy about getting a detention for it.

“My essay was supposed to be my opinion, so it’s not fair that I get punished for it,” she says. “Dad?”

“You wrote that your chemistry teacher was a dick,” Peter says, raising his brows. “Which had nothing to do with Captain Ahab, or English lit, at all.”

“I made a comparison,” Malia says, rolling her eyes. “ _Moby Dick_ versus giant dick. You’re a teacher! You’re supposed to encourage free speech!”

“Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences,” Peter tells her.

“Mark!” Malia petitions. “You’re a teacher too!”

Laura’s husband shrugs. “I teach seven-year-olds, Malia, not teenagers. For which I am eternally grateful.”

Malia rolls her eyes again.

As dinner progresses, Derek relaxes more and more. Stiles is okay. He’s still a little wary, and still pressed up close against Derek, but he’s happy enough shoveling food in his mouth. He even tries some of the salad, although he ends up spitting most of it straight out again.

“Ew!” Sarah exclaims.

Stiles turn to look at her, eyes wide, mouth hanging open.

She points her fork at him. “You’re gross!”

Her fork has a piece of meatloaf on it. Stiles reaches down past Derek and grabs it, shoving it in his mouth.

Sarah giggles.

“You’ll make yourself sick,” Derek warns him. He knows that even if Stiles understood, he wouldn’t listen. A winter of deprivation in the Preserve, probably longer, has taught him to grab what he can when he can. Moderation is something that will take him a while to learn.

Dessert is apple pie, made by Amy. It’s delicious. Stiles’s eyes grow impossibly big when he tries his first mouthful, Derek helping him with a spoon this time. He chatters excitedly, gesturing to his pie, and tries to fling the spoon away so he can dig into it with his hands.

“No,” Derek says, keeping a firm hold on the spoon. “Let’s try it this way.”

The kids giggle at the ensuing mess. Derek ends up with apple in his hair. It’s worse than feeding Jacob.

Stiles licks his plate clean, then looks around for more.

He whines dejectedly when Derek takes him by the hands and leads him from the table. Derek takes him into the living room and directs him to the couch. Stiles huffs and wraps himself in a blanket. He pulls it over his head, clearly annoyed at Derek, but eventually peeks out again when Derek turns the television on, and rests his head on Derek’s lap as he watches the screen.

Laura, Jacob on her hip, comes and sits next to Derek on the couch. “Don’t think that your new babysitting gig will get you out of doing the dishes forever,” she tells him.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Derek lies, stroking Stiles’s head.

Laura smiles. “You’re doing a great job with Stiles, though.”

Stiles’s gaze darts toward her.

“Yes, Stiles. That’s your name,” Derek tells him. He’ll figure it out eventually.

Stiles’s gaze slides back to the television.

Derek wonders if he has an actual name, or if he’s been living wild for so long that he’s forgotten it. It’s difficult to figure out how long he was with the foxes. He’s clearly more comfortable on two legs than on all fours, so he can’t have been with them since he was an infant. And how would he have survived with them then anyway? But if he ever learned to speak, he’s been wild long enough that he’s forgotten how.

They watch television for a while in silence, several other members of the pack coming in to join them. James sits down on the easy chair beside the couch, and yawns.

“Long day?” Derek asks him.

James smiles. “Just getting old.”

Stiles chuffs at something on the television.

“Rotting his brain already?” James asks.

Derek snorts. “A little bit of television won’t hurt him, Dad.”

Stiles jerks suddenly, and makes an enquiring noise in his throat.

“What?” Derek asks him, rubbing his scalp. “You agree with my dad?”

Stiles stills, and blinks, and for a moment Derek thinks he actually understands. Something has shifted in his expression, and he looks achingly vulnerable. His lower lip trembles and his eyes fill with tears.

“Dad,” James says quietly. “He knows the word.”

Stiles blinks, and tears slide down his face.

“Hey,” Derek says, his chest tightening. He wishes Stiles had some way of explaining what has happened to him, where he’s come from and who he’s lost on the way. Most of all he wishes that Stiles could understand him when he tells him he’s okay. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Stiles.”

Stiles burrows closer, hiding his head under the blanket again, and trembling.

 

***

 

This close to full moon, it’s easier to get Alex to talk about the things he wants. They’re sitting together on Derek’s bed, the laptop open on Derek’s lap. Stiles is snoring in a pile of blankets on Derek’s other side.

“I like that one,” Alex says, pointing to the pink blouse.

“We could get that one,” Derek says, and clicks to add it to his cart.

Alex chews his bottom lip worriedly. “Der?”

Derek is aware that his brother’s heartbeat is quickening. Whatever he’s going to say, he’s clearly working his courage up first. “Yeah?”

Alex chews his lip for a moment longer before he finally speaks. “Do you think I could buy a dress?”

“If you want one.”

“Not for school or anything.” Alex flushes. “But maybe to wear at home? Would that be stupid?”

“Of course it’s not stupid,” Derek tells him. He puts an arm around Alex’s shoulders and squeezes him close. “And if anyone says it is, you tell me and I’ll punch them in the throat.”

Alex snorts, but doesn’t say anything else when Derek clicks on the dresses. They browse for a while, and Alex picks two dresses that he likes. Then Derek convinces him to check out some shoes, just in case he doesn’t want to wear his new dresses with trainers.

“Der, do you think there’s something wrong with me?” Alex asks at last in a small voice.

“I think you’re perfect,” Derek tells him, his heart breaking a little that Alex even thinks he has to ask the question. “I think that if sometimes you feel like you’re a boy and sometimes you feel like you’re a girl, that’s okay. That’s who you are. And I love every part of you.”

Alex hugs him fiercely for a moment, and Derek knows he’s trying not to cry. “This is why Mom put you in charge of Stiles, you know.”

“Why?” Derek is genuinely puzzled.

“Because out of everyone in the pack, you’re the one who thinks the most about how other people are feeling.” Alex wipes at his eyes. “You’re the one who tries hardest to make people feel better, and you don’t even know it.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Derek begins.

“See! You don’t even know it!” Alex shows him a shaky grin. “Everyone else is good, because they let me borrow girl stuff and they don’t make fun of me, but you’re the best, because you’re the only one who thought I might want to have my own nice clothes!”

Derek doesn’t know what to say. “I just wanted you to be happy.”

Alex bursts into tears, and flings his arms around him again. “See! See!”

He’s laughing as well as crying, so Derek figures that’s a win. He hugs Alex back. It’s only when Alex eventually disentangles himself that they both become aware that Stiles is awake, his head poking out of his blankets, and he’s watching them closely.

“Oh, shit,” Alex whispers, his face tear-stained. “He’s going to kill me, isn’t he?”

Instead, Stiles reaches out over Derek and gently pats Alex on the cheek.

Derek holds his breath.

Alex’s jaw drops.

Stiles pulls his hand back at last, grumbles softly, and rolls over and starts snoring again.


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles has very much made himself at home in Derek’s room. He’s particularly attracted to Derek’s laptop, which Derek has taken to locking with a passcode. Stiles likes the clicking sound the keys make, and growls when he taps them and nothing happens on the screen. He also likes to go through Derek’s drawers and pull his clothes out to use to build his nests on the bed. Every morning Derek steals them back and shoves them in the drawer again. And somewhere at the back of Derek’s closet, Stiles found the wolf plushie Derek had been inseparable from as a kid, even though now he pretends he doesn’t even remember Wolfie’s name.

“Fine,” he tells Stiles. “It’s Wolfie. Imaginative, I know.”

Stiles chuffs at him. He tucks Wolfie under his chin while he watches videos on Derek’s laptop, and chews on the end of his tail.

Stiles is more at home in the house now. He doesn’t need to cling to Derek whenever he’s outside the bedroom. The only reason Derek still accompanies him to the bathroom is to make sure he doesn’t spend all day playing with the toilet. Stiles is more than happy to go on solitary forays to the kitchen. He’s even discovered the house has a third floor, and has sniffed out the bedrooms up there as well. He seems compelled to know where every member of the Hale pack sleeps.

Alex is his favorite after Derek.

Cora is his least favorite.

He’s wary of Talia, and Derek wonders if that’s because she’s the alpha, and Stiles isn’t sure of his place in the pack yet. With the others he’s cautious, but no longer hostile.

Derek, who only days ago dreamed of a couple of hours of peace, finds that he misses Stiles whenever he wanders off for a while.

One evening, the night before the full moon, Derek realizes he’s just read five entire news articles online without being bothered once. So he goes looking.

He finds Stiles in the library, with Peter.

Peter’s been drinking. Derek can smell it.

Derek loves his uncle, but he knows that Peter has a cruel streak that’s only exacerbated when he drinks. Peter knows it too, but he still drinks.

Peter’s standing by the desk. He’s smiling. There’s a half empty glass of whiskey leaving a ring on the mahogany. Stiles is standing in front of him, eyes fixed on his hand. There’s a strange sort of stillness to both of them, and Derek gets the uncomfortable feeling that he’s interrupted something.

“What’re you doing?” he asks in a low voice, his stomach twisting a little.

“What?” Peter’s smile inches up another few degrees. “He likes it.”

Derek’s stomach clenches as Peter holds his palm out to Stiles. He’s holding a sugar cube. Stiles’s eyes grow wide, and he shuffles forward eagerly. When he gets closer to Peter he drops down onto his haunches, his face upturned, swiping his tongue over his bottom lip.

“Good boy,” Peter croons, his eyes dancing. He scrubs his free hand over Stiles’s scalp. Stiles grunts and pulls his head sideways, trying to get around Peter’s touch to the treat.

Derek feels a spike of satisfaction at that. Peter has to bribe Stiles with sugar to get him to allow his touch, but Stiles will burrow close to Derek when he’s seeking comfort.

“I’ve been reading up. Do you know what they used to keep humans for?” Peter asks. He lets Stiles take the sugar cube in his mouth, then smiles as Stiles darts his tongue out to lick his palm “So malleable. So easily trained.”

“Peter,” Derek says in a warning tone.

Peter laughs and steps back. “I’m just playing with him, Derek.”

Stiles twists around, dropping from his haunches to his hands and knees. His face is quizzical as he looks at Derek.

“He’s not a toy. You don’t play with him like this.” Derek says, then softens his tone as he holds his hand out. “Come on, Stiles.”

Stiles scrambles forward, nuzzling into Derek’s hand, grumbling and muttering peevishly when he finds no sugar there. Still, he leans against Derek’s legs, even while he cranes his neck hopefully to see if Peter has more treats.

“Go and get a cookie,” Derek tells him.

Stiles knows that word. He shoots to his feet and scuttles away toward the kitchen.

Peter takes a sip of whiskey. “What?” he asks again.

“It’s not funny,” Derek tells him. “Jesus, Peter, just… just don’t be such an asshole.”

It’s easier than what he really wants to say: _I’m sorry you’re unhappy, I’m sorry you screwed up your marriage, but stop trying to prove you’re unaffected by being this cold, cruel person. It’s doesn’t suit you, and I know you’re better than that._

Peter’s smile falters for a moment, then he snorts. “I didn’t hurt your precious little shadow, Derek.”

It’s not about that, though. It’s about the fact that Stiles is naïve and vulnerable, and Peter’s instinct was to take advantage of that. It’s about the fact that nobody should feel the need to degrade or mock someone who doesn’t understand, who _can’t_ understand. It’s cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and Derek hates it.

“I know,” he says, keeping his voice calm. “But it’s not funny, Peter.”

Peter opens his mouth, and then closes it again. Then he sighs, and pushes the glass of whiskey away. He doesn’t quite meet Derek’s gaze, but his heartbeat is steady. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

It’s so unexpected that for a moment Derek doesn’t know how to respond. He nods, and clears his throat, and then says, “It’s okay.”

He’s been saying it so much to Stiles that the words just tumble out now. And it never really occurred to him, until he sees his uncle’s expression soften, that maybe Peter has been needing to hear it as well. 

 

***

 

On the morning of his first full moon with the pack, Stiles sits down on the back porch and blinks in the sunlight while Alex paints his fingernails. It’s a Saturday, so all the kids are home. Matty and Sarah and Nate are running around with a football. Cassie is trying, and failing, to keep up with them. Cora and Malia are ignoring their demands to play. Jacob is sitting in a pile of leaves, smashing two of his cars together.

Stiles is surprisingly patient as Alex does his nails. It probably helps that Alex has already painted Derek’s. Alex has Stiles’s hand resting on his knee to keep it steady, his fingers curled loosely around Stiles’s wrist.

“This one is called Pink Flamingo,” Alex says.  He wrinkles his nose. “It’s kind of a dumb name, but it’s a nice color.”

Stiles hums in agreement, tilting his head curiously as he looks down at his hand.

“Suits you,” Alex says.

Stiles rumbles happily.

In the yard, the football game is getting raucous.

“Hey!” Malia yells at the kids as they run too close to Jacob, scattering leaves and making him startle. “Watch it!”

Giggling and shrieking, the kids ignore her. Derek rolls his eyes.

“You have to wait until it dries before you stick your fingers in your mouth,” Alex tells Stiles. He shows him how to wiggle his fingers. Then he takes Stiles’s other hand and puts it on his knee. Stiles grabs the hem of Alex’s dress, interested in the colorful pattern, and Alex sighs. “Der?”

Derek helps Alex straighten Stiles’s fingers out gently.

The dress is one they ordered online. Alex is wearing it over his jeans. He says it’s because it’s cold, but Derek remembers they ordered leggings as well. He thinks that maybe Alex just isn’t quite ready to wear the entire ensemble yet. Maybe next month.

Alex paints Stiles’s thumbnail, then hums. This is Stiles’s more injured hand. The nails on two of his fingers are broken halfway down to the nail beds. “We’ll leave these two and just do the others, okay?”

Stiles chuffs at him.

“It’ll still look pretty,” Alex reassures him.

Derek smiles at that. It’s good to know he’s not the only one who fills in Stiles’s noises with imaginary rejoinders, and creates conversations out of nothing.

“Are you running tonight?” Derek asks him.

“I guess,” Alex says. He’s still a little shy about letting his wolf out since puberty hit. “Are you?”

“Maybe. If Stiles is okay with being left alone for a bit.”

“If you want, we can take turns to run,” Alex tells him. “That way one of us can stay with him.”

Derek smiles at that. Their mom always says that he and Alex could have been twins even though they were born a decade apart, and it’s true that Derek feels closer to Alex than any of his other siblings. He loves the others, of course, but he never has to explain himself much to Alex. They just get each other, and always have. “That should work. As long as you’re still not scared he’s going to murder you in your sleep.”

Alex huffs, and bends down close to apply a coat of Pink Flamingo to Stiles’s little finger. “Oh, please. No, look at us, we’re totally bonding now.”

Derek laughs, and Stiles chuffs again.

“The color really suits you,” Alex tells Stiles.

Derek looks up sharply as Jacob starts shrieking. He’s been knocked down by the bigger kids, and is spitting out leaves. He’s more aggrieved than anything, face screwed up angrily.

“What the hell are you doing?” Malia demands, marching over toward the kids. “I told you to watch out for him!”

Derek’s willing to let Malia deal with them as long as she keeps her temper in hand. Which, on the morning of a full moon, is going to be a big ask. Malia is volatile at the best of times.

Matty hurries to sit Jacob up again, pulling leaves out of his mouth. “It was an accident! We didn’t mean it!”

“It’s Sarah’s fault!” Nate says. “She pushed me!”

“I didn’t!” Sarah exclaims.

“You _did_!” Nate turns and shoves her roughly.

Sarah growls, and shoves him back.

“Hey!” Malia shouts. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

She rounds on the kids, half-shifting. Her eyes flash gold, and her lips curl back to reveal fangs. Her claws extend. She growls in warning, the sound low and threatening.

Derek is about to stand up and head over to play peacemaker when Stiles screams.

The sound chills him.

It’s not the sound of a fox’s scream. It’s human. It’s terrified.

“Stiles?” Derek turns, to find Stiles crouched on the porch. Somehow he’s shoved Alex behind him. The nail polish is spilling slowly over the floorboards.

Stiles’s face is pale, his wide eyes fixed on Malia. He scrabbles for Derek’s wrist, grabs it, and tugs Derek behind him. He clenches his fingers into fists.

“Stiles,” Derek says, his heart thumping.

Oh shit. It never occurred to him that Stiles might not know. Because how could anyone not know?

“Derek, what’s he doing?” Alex asks in worried voice.

“He’s protecting us,” Derek says, his voice cracking. “From the wolf.”

 

***

 

Derek won’t be running tonight. Not now. He carries Stiles, still shaking, up to their bedroom. Alex runs to fetch Talia, and Stiles screams at him.

“It’s okay,” Derek tells him, closing the bedroom door. “Shit, Stiles, it’s okay. Alex is okay, and I’m okay, and you’re okay too, I promise.”

Stiles’s face is tear-stained. He’s shivering, gekkering, and panicking. Derek pulls him onto the bed and into an embrace.

“Oh, shit,” he whispers. “How could you not _know_?”

Stiles is terrified of werewolves, and he didn’t even realize he’s been living with a pack of them for a little over two weeks now.

Stiles clings his arms around Derek’s neck and makes frantic, chattering noises into his throat.

Derek rubs his back. “Oh, Stiles. God.”

He’s terrified too. He’s terrified of how Stiles will react when he finds out that Derek is a wolf. It’s not something he can hide from him forever. It’s not something he wants to hide, even if he could. He _is_ a wolf.

He looks up when his door opens and closes softly.

“Malia is very sorry,” Talia says gently.

Derek almost smiles. Malia, sorry? That’s got to be a first. “It wasn’t her fault.”

Talia sits down on the other side of Stiles. “I don’t know where you came from, my little love. I don’t know how you didn’t know about us.”

A world without wolves is as alien a concept to Derek as a world with only humans in it. He wonders if there really are enclaves where humans still exist, where there are no wolves except in fairytales, or in nightmares.

“I don’t know what to do, Mom,” he whispers. This is the first time with Stiles that he’s been so afraid.

“You have to show him, baby,” Talia says quietly. “He has to know.”

Stiles chatters and whimpers against Derek’s throat, and Derek is terrified he’ll lose this closeness once Stiles knows the truth, lose the trust they’ve built, but he knows his mom is right.

He slowly peels Stiles off him, and lets him snuggle up against him. He takes Stiles’s hand in his, and almost laughs at their matching pink fingernails.

“I don’t want to scare you,” he says, holding Stiles’s amber gaze. He brings their hands up in front of Stiles’s face. “I don’t want to, but you need to see.”

He lets his wolf close to the surface, and slowly extends his claws.

Stiles shrieks, and thrashes, and tries to pull away.

Derek’s heart breaks a little. “It’s okay,” he says. “Stiles, it’s okay. I would never hurt you.”

Stiles opens his mouth and wails. Tears stream down his face. For the first time since those early fraught days, fear doesn’t drive him closer to Derek.

Derek feels like he’s been doused in freezing water. He wants to hug Stiles, wants to comfort him, but Stiles is terrified. Terrified of _Derek_.

“It’s okay,” he repeats, his voice cracking.

“Let him go,” Talia says softly.

The second Derek releases him, Stiles scrambles backward over the bed. He lands on the floor with a painful-sounding thump, and wedges himself under the bed. Derek is empty. Bereft.

Talia leans forward and puts her palm on his cheek. “He’ll come around. Give him a little time. He knows you, Der.”

Derek is afraid that the only thing Stiles knows is that he’s a monster.

 

***

 

Derek doesn’t run with the rest of the pack that night.

The sounds of Stiles’s whimpering from under the bed keeps him awake. He leaves a plate of cookies on the floor that stays untouched. He finds Stiles’s favorite episode of _Dora the Explorer_ and plays it, but even that doesn’t draw him out.

“I’m sorry, Stiles,” he whispers in the darkness, feeling his eyes stinging with tears. “I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I’m sorry you didn’t know. I’m sorry you’re scared of me.” He wipes his eyes.

Stiles’s whimpers stop, and then he makes a curious noise from underneath the bed.

“Yeah, I’m crying too, and if you ever tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you.”

Stiles makes a huffing noise.

“Yes, this is worse than the first ten minutes of _Up_.”

Another curious noise, and Derek smiles despite himself.

“And no, I didn’t cry in the first ten minutes of _Up_ ,” he lies. “I also didn’t cry when Dug was hiding under the porch because he loved Carl.”

But he definitely does cry when Stiles suddenly appears from beside the bed and launches himself at him, burrowing close and chattering anxiously and shoving his face into Derek’s throat.

“See? It’s okay, it’s okay,” Derek says, over and over again. He feel as though a weight has been lifted off his chest and he can breathe again for the first time in hours. He holds Stiles close, and eventually falls asleep with the boy’s limbs tangled with his own.

 


	8. Chapter 8

It takes Stiles a day or two to venture out of Derek’s room again. At meals he regards the pack suspiciously, unhappily at first, but he soon seems to forget his fear. In the face of food, usually. Derek admits he spoils him a little, shoving sugary treats toward him even though Deaton will disapprove, until Stiles seems as happy as he was before he saw Malia shift. Derek figures this is as close as they’ll get to understanding while Stiles still can’t communicate. He feels safe enough to start chattering madly again, even in company, and on the night he reaches over and grabs a chicken leg off Malia’s plate, Derek figures he knows nobody is going to tear his throat out.

Stiles’s moods are most easily measured, and modified, by his appetite.

The days turn into weeks, turn into months. Derek watches the calendar, and wonders if his mom will let him defer another semester as well. Stiles is doing really well, but he’s still not ready to be separated from Derek. Or maybe, Derek worries, it’s Derek who’s not ready to be separated from Stiles.

Derek researches fox packs, and exchanges a few emails with a teacher of Environmental Studies at the local community college, and with one of the guys he went to school with who is a ranger now. He tells them both he’s thinking of changing his major when he’s back at Stanford, and is interested in doing something to do with local conservation. The teacher from the college sends some helpful research his way. His friend from school tells him he’s an idiot, and does he realize how much an architect earns in comparison to a ranger?

He doesn’t find out as much as he wants to know though. Specifically, he wants to know how far could the foxes have travelled, and where could they have come from. None of the foxes in the area are tagged though, so there’s not a lot of data to study. Why would they be tagged? It’s not as though they’re endangered.

Sometimes Derek pores over maps of the Preserve, and of northern California, and wonders how long Stiles was with the foxes, and where he found them. He wonders if there are pockets in the wilderness where a human could be born, and live, and nobody would ever find out. Stiles’s existence should be proof that it’s possible, that it’s already happened, but there are still so many unanswered questions that Derek isn’t prepared to start making any assumptions about his origins yet.

He hopes that one day Stiles will be able to tell him himself.

One Saturday Derek goes looking for him and finds him in his dad’s workshop, just standing and staring as James works.

“We’re fine, Derek,” James says mildly, planing a length of timber.

Stiles leans into Derek.

“You came to visit my dad?” Derek asks him.

Stiles makes a small, sad noise at the word, and Derek realizes his mistake. Stiles likes James, but the connection he’s searching for isn’t here. The dad he’s looking for isn’t.

Derek has found at least fifty human surnames that start with STIL. All extinct, of course. He doesn’t even know if any of them relate to Stiles. The tag might not have belonged to a family member at all, and, even if it did, there’s no way of telling whose it was.

The more Stiles grows, the more he learns to be a human again, the more Derek senses the sadness in him. The more he grows, the more it seems he becomes aware that he’s lost.

Generally though, Stiles is happy with the pack now. He still flinches away if the kids forget and accidentally shift in front of him; the sudden reminder that he’s among wolves unsettles him. Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly cheeky and brave, he grabs Derek’s hand and presses the pads of his fingers in demand, grinning when Derek allows his claws to extend.

He’s comfortable enough around the pack that his personality begins to shine through.

It turns out his personality is that of an annoying little shit.

He attempts to build a den in Derek’s bedroom, made out of blankets and newspaper and cardboard boxes. He tries to bring in branches and bracken from the yard, but Talia won’t allow it. He smuggles in a dead crow under his baggy shirt one day, and shakes his head and growls when Talia holds out her hand to demand it.

Talia growls back, flashing her eyes, and Stiles yelps and drops the crow. Then he scuttles behind the couch in the living room and sulks and frets for hours. Derek eventually bribes him out with a chocolate brownie, which, knowing Stiles, could have been what he was angling for all along. He’s a manipulative little thing, and has quickly learned to use his wide eyes and his trembling bottom lip to get Derek to fold in a heartbeat.

He gets on better with Deaton now as well, or at least pretends to, and crows with delight when Deaton lets his guard down one day and he finally manages to bite the vet. Then he whines and huffs in displeasure when he doesn’t get his post-examination chocolate.

“What?” Derek raises his eyebrows. “You seriously thought you could bite him, and he’d still give you chocolate?”

Stiles mutters and grumbles under his breath.

“You _bit_ him!” Derek exclaims.

Stiles grins proudly.

He’s a terror.

He skids along the polished floors in his socks, chattering and yipping.

He makes himself sick by breaking into a packet of dry macaroni and eating the whole thing.

He leaves muddy footprints on Derek’s sheets.

He eats Laura’s strawberry ChapStick.

He _laughs_.

The first time Stiles’s customary chuffing sound transforms into a clearer sound, into something that is only a fraction removed from a _voice_ , Derek is almost too startled to respond. Luckily Stiles doesn’t notice, too busy pushing the button on Jacob’s bubble machine and filling the sunroom with bubbles. Derek watches the bubbles shine and glisten as they catch the light and then burst, and knows that Stiles is another step closer to being human, to communicating. He has empathy, and humor, and he’s so smart that he astonishes Derek in some way every day. Living with Stiles, watching him, is like seeing an intricate flower unfurl from a bud, one miraculous petal at a time.

Stiles amazes him.

 

***

 

Stiles has been with them for four months before he says his first word. The first three months, Derek thinks, were an adjustment period. The last one was pure stubbornness. It’s been obvious for a while that Stiles knows what’s being said around him. Maybe he can’t understand every single word, but he knows enough to follow along, and he knows all his trigger words. Like no, and toothbrush, and vet.

And he sure as hell knows how to use his big, sad eyes to beg.

“Come on,” Derek tells him, tugging him gently by the wrist toward the bathroom. “You know you’ve got to brush your teeth before bed, Stiles.”

His big eyes get bigger, and sadder.

“Come on,” Derek urges him, and he can hear Laura laughing at him from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s not so bad.”

“Bad,” Stiles mumbles. “Bad.”

Derek drops his wrist and gapes.

“Bad,” Stiles says again, and makes a face. “Yuck. Bad, Derek.”

“Holy shit,” Derek says. “Stiles!”

He wants to yell for Laura or his parents. He wants to grab Stiles in a massive hug and shout out his astonishment. But he can’t, he won’t, because Stiles might freak out. He’s watching Derek warily, and Derek doesn’t know if it’s about the toothbrush, or if it’s because he’s spoken. If this is a huge deal for Derek, it must be even bigger for Stiles. Derek doesn’t want to overwhelm him.

His large amber eyes are filling with tears, and his bottom lip is trembling.

“You can talk,” Derek whispers to him. “That’s _good_. That’s so good, Stiles.”

He always knew Stiles could do it. He _knew_ it.

Stiles looks ready to break and run.

“C’mere,” Derek says softly, and pulls him into a gentle hug. Stiles snuffles against his throat, and Derek rubs his hand over his hair. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

When Derek’s shifting, there’s always this moment between animal and man that makes him shiver. Not the moment when his body shifts, but when his consciousness does. It’s like coming up from underwater: a sudden breathless moment when the entire world is different. It always leaves Derek shaky and off-kilter, if only for a few seconds. Stiles has been living that moment for months now.

Stiles’s hitching breath is hot against Derek’s throat.

“You’re so clever,” Derek whispers to him. “So clever.”

“No tooth,” Stiles mumbles. “No tooth, Derek.”

Derek rubs his other hand up and down the boy’s spine, feeling the warmth of his skin under his thin t-shirt. “Okay. No tooth tonight, but just this once.”

“No tooth.” Stiles pulls back and grins.

Derek’s fairly certain he’s been conned.

 

***

 

Stiles sleeps in Derek’s bed that night. It feels different now, for Derek at least. Now that he knows Stiles is capable of communicating, capable of talking, he worries that this is something they should be talking about. Stiles isn’t some frightened half-wild kit anymore. He’s not an animal, not a pet. Derek doesn’t know if Stiles has the ability to articulate what he wants, or what he’s feeling, his hatred of dental hygiene notwithstanding, and he isn’t sure he can get away with treating Stiles like a small child anymore. He never was, of course, but tonight Derek is more aware of it than he’s ever been. Tonight when Stiles snuggles closer in his sleep, Derek worries about the implications. One month from now, or one year from now, how will this work? At what point should he send Stiles to his own bed? At what point should Derek start treating him like a grown up instead of a toddler? At what point will Stiles look back and be embarrassed by this?

Derek wants his relationship with Stiles to be one of equals, in as much as a wolf and a human can be considered equal—only in the walls of this house, he guesses—and he’s afraid that they won’t have that chance if Stiles is too reliant on him. In a month, in a year, in a decade, he wants them to be _friends_.

It breaks his heart to do it, but he knows that he needs to put some distance between them. Just… he doesn’t want to do it yet.

He can’t sleep. He untangles himself from Stiles and goes downstairs. He finds Peter in the library, a glass of whiskey in one hand and a book in the other. He’s slouched on the couch like he has no intention of ever leaving it.

“Rough day?” Peter asks wryly when Derek pours himself a drink.

“Stiles is talking,” Derek says.

“Really?”

Derek nods sharply.

Peter raises his brows. “It seems to me you should be a lot happier about that.”

Derek grimaces.

“Oh, I know,” Peter says. “You’re worrying about whether or not you should cut the apron strings. Well, if you want my opinion—”

“I don’t,” Derek mutters.

Peter pretends he didn’t hear him. “If you want my opinion, stay.”

“Stay?” Derek asks.

Peter sighs. “Malia was seven when Patricia and I divorced. Not the same thing, I know, but I promise I have a point. A pack will usually side with a mother when it comes to child custody, of course, except Malia was her daddy’s little girl. I still remember how she screamed at me not to go. It’s not the sort of thing one ever forgets, I suppose. And by the time I got her back and she came to live with us here, I realized just how much I’d missed. Mostly, I’d missed the opportunity to explain it to her. She was seven. I thought that even if she was too small to understand then, that she’d grow into understanding, but she never really has. She loves me, but there’s a part of her that will always feel exactly the way she did when I ignored her screams and walked away.” He tosses back the rest of his drink. “And that’s your little human, too, right now. If you leave him now, when he doesn’t understand, he’ll always hurt.”

Derek sips his whiskey. It burns the back of his throat. “But what if I make it worse? What if he just gets more attached?”

Peter looks at him like he’s crazy. “ _More_ attached? Derek, that ship has well and truly sailed. He couldn’t get more attached if he tried.”

“I can’t…I can’t stay forever.”

Peter shrugs.

“I don’t want to leave him,” Derek says, and the words feel hot and bitter and selfish.

“No,” Peter agrees. “But sometimes you have to anyway.”

 

***

 

“Food!” Stiles announces the next morning at breakfast, and preens when the entire pack stops to stare. “Food!”

“He’s _talking_!” Matty screeches.

Jacob takes the opportunity to contribute by tipping his cereal all over himself.

For once it’s not Stiles with the worst table manners.

Stiles beams at the astonished pack.

Talia gets up and comes to stand behind them. She folds her arms around Derek and presses a kiss to his head. “That’s wonderful. I’m so proud of you both.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he says, flushing. “This is all Stiles!”

“Stiles,” Stiles says with a grin.

Talia smiles and releases Derek in order to press her hand against Stiles’s cheek. “He wouldn’t have done it without you, Derek.”

Derek doesn’t believe that. Stiles is nothing if not stubborn. He would have got to this point eventually. Derek has the feeling that now he’s discovered how to use words, he’ll be unstoppable.

Even without Derek.

 _Especially_ without Derek.

Derek doesn’t know what to do. He’d been going to ask Talia about taking another semester off. He’d had all his justifications ready, but now that Stiles can talk it changes everything. He won’t need Derek as much anymore, and that’s a good thing. That’s what Derek has been working toward this whole time. It’s just difficult to remember that right now, when every step that Stiles takes toward independence feels like a step he’s taking away from Derek.

Talia smiles at him slightly as she takes her seat again. Her smile seems a little sad. Of course she knows exactly what Derek’s thinking.

He picks at his breakfast.

He’d thought it would be weeks before Stiles talked, at least, and that the decision about going back to college would have been made for him. But now, he doesn’t know. Stiles has unwittingly given Derek the perfect window of opportunity to get back to Stanford, which was supposed to have been the plan all along.

He wants to stay, but he’s not sure that’s the best thing for Stiles. He doesn’t want Stiles to become too dependent on him, but he doesn’t want him to feel like he’s been abandoned either.

Derek watches Stiles eat, and remembers that he’s strong and clever and more stubborn and resilient than he looks.

Stiles is still eating when Derek finishes. He’s chattering like a fox between mouthfuls, and throwing out the occasional word, grinning when the pack praises him.

Derek remembers that he’ll be okay.

Stiles has the pack, and the pack will support him. They’ll teach him to stand on his own two feet. If Derek stays any longer, he’s afraid he’ll risk making him too dependant, holding him back. Despite what Peter said about Malia, Stiles is not a child, and he needs the chance to grow.

Stiles deserves more than Derek can offer him on his own.

Stiles deserves to be independent. 

Derek goes upstairs, logs onto his student account on the Stanford website and re-enrolls for the upcoming semester.

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

“Food!” Stiles exclaims in delight as Derek leads him into the kitchen that night.

Laura’s standing by the counter, stirring a green tea. She looks half asleep. It’s past midnight, after all.

“Food!” Stiles tells her happily.

“Hmm, food,” she says, and pats him on the shoulder as she leaves the kitchen. “Well done.”

Stiles’s vocabulary isn’t extensive, but they’re all encouraging him to use it.

Stiles scurries over to the kitchen table and sits. He reaches out and wrestles a cookie jar close, tugging the lid off. “Food?”

“Just one,” Derek says, and holds up a single finger.

Stiles takes two, when Derek knows damn well he understood what he meant. He shoves them both in his mouth so that Derek can’t take them back.

Derek sits down across from him. “Please don’t choke on those.”

“’ood,” Stiles mumbles, spraying crumbs.

“Stiles, I need to talk to you,” Derek tells him. “And I don’t know how much of this you’ll understand, but I need to tell you anyway, okay?”

Stiles looks at the cookie jars hopefully.

“I’m going back to college,” Derek says. “In six more days. And I’ll be gone for a while, okay, but I will come back, and the pack will look after you while I’m not here.”

He hates that he can’t tell if there is any understanding in Stiles’s wide eyes or not.

“I’m studying to be an architect,” he says. “Two more semesters and then I’ll graduate. It’s what I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid.” He’s always been drawn to architecture for its marriage between form and function. It is art at its most practical application.

“And then you came along,” Derek says with a smile.

Stiles’s mouth quirks up.

“And now I don’t know what to do.” He shakes his head. “Well, that’s not true. I know what to do, it’s just gonna make me sad, okay?

Stiles chews the bottom of his lip, and reaches for the cookie jar again. He pulls the lid off and takes out a cookie. He holds it out to Derek. “Derek.”

“Do you think a cookie will make me happy?” Derek asks, and takes it anyway. “Works for you, right?”

Stiles’s smile is a little uncertain.

“You think cookies are magic,” Derek tells him.

“Yum,” Stiles tells him. He stands up and reaches for Derek’s hand. Then he tugs him back upstairs to the bedroom and ushers him toward the bed.

Derek sits, and Stiles sits next to him.

Stiles takes his hand and presses the pads of his fingers.

Derek lets his claws extend a fraction.

Stiles smiles. “Derek. Pointy. Derek is pointy.”

He’s not learning how to speak, Derek knows. Nobody could learn this fast. He must have been verbal when the foxes found him, and it’s all coming back to him now. He’s _remembering_.

“I’m a wolf,” Derek tells him.

“Wolf.” Stiles twists his mouth up and looks dubious.

“Ugh.” Derek shakes his head. “You don’t even know what a wolf is, do you?”

“Derek,” Stiles says, and pokes him in the chest. 

“You’re so smart,” Derek smiles, his chest aching.

Stiles grins at him.

 

***

 

Derek has six days to get Stiles used to the fact that he doesn’t always have to be there. He sends Stiles on a picnic with Alex and Matty after school one day. Sure, it’s within yelling distance of the house and Derek stays down on the back porch with a book in case he’s needed, but it still makes his heart beat a little faster when Stiles walks into the trees with the boys. Stiles’s heart is beating fast as well. Derek can hear it long after Stiles has vanished from sight, after casting a series of worried looks in Derek’s direction. But, food and Alex should be enough of a distraction.

They’re all back within the hour, Stiles thumping up onto the porch to embrace Derek like it’s been years instead, nuzzling and snuffling against him.

The next day, Derek goes with Amy and Clare into Beacon Hills to help them fix the sign on the coffee shop. It’s been hanging at a weird angle ever since the last storm passed through town a few months back. Derek’s there for an hour fixing the sign, and then he walks home. The house is a few miles out of town. He checks his phone a few times for messages, but there are none. When he gets back, Stiles is sitting on the floor in front of Talia’s desk, leafing through a picture book with Cassie.

“He’s fine,” Talia says.

Stiles beams at Derek, and Derek feels strangely upset that Stiles doesn’t hug him like he did the day before. Then he feels a rush of guilt for being selfish.

He starts letting Stiles use the bathroom on his own, only knocking on the door to hurry him along if he’s been in the shower too long.

He’s gratified, because Stiles seems to grow into all the spaces that Derek leaves for him, and he knows this is the right decision. Stiles starts spending time with other members of the pack. He likes to hang out in James’s workshop when he’s home. He likes to leaf through Peter’s art books, and listens with his head on an angle while Peter explains form and composition and the use of color. He helps Aunt Clare feed the chickens, although she swears she doesn’t trust the glint in his eyes when he does it. He’s the extremely willing volunteer when Kaylee and Amy want to try out a new cookie recipe for the coffee shop. He helps William wash the cars one afternoon, and ends up soaking wet and shivering in the cold. He plays with the kids. He demands Alex paint his nails when the Pink Flamingo chips off. He even sits in the living room with Cora and Malia, and glares at them when they try to change the channel on the TV. He starts getting closer to Talia as well, smiling when she talks to him and pats him on the head. When she tells him to wash his hands before eating, he grumbles but obeys, recognizing her as the alpha.

Derek knows that this can work, that the pack will fill the hole he leaves, and take over Derek’s role as caregiver. It will work as long as Stiles lets it work. He’s happy to expand his horizons and build relationships with the pack as long as Derek is there. Derek only hopes it will hold once he’s gone.

Two days before he leaves for Stanford, Derek goes into Beacon Hills again. This time he spends the whole day in town. When he gets back, Stiles is sitting on the front steps waiting for him. This time Derek gets another huge hug, Stiles’s wrapping his limbs around him tightly and chattering like a fox.

“Hey, stop that,” Derek tells him gently, and forces a smile. “You don’t need me here every second of the day.”

“Derek,” Stiles grumbles.

“I’m going to college soon, remember?”

Stiles nods, but Derek isn’t sure he knows what it means.

“But you’ll be okay. You’ll find lots of trouble to get into without me, won’t you?”

Stiles huffs.

 

***

 

The night before Derek leaves, Stiles watches with a frown as he packs his bags. Derek talks to him while he packs, telling him all about Stanford, and his professors, and his friends, and even the annoying guy a few rooms down who likes to listen to death metal at three o’clock in the morning. Stiles listens seriously, and nods occasionally. Then he takes his track pants out of Derek’s bottom drawer and tries to shove them in a bag.

“No,” Derek says, and pulls them out again. “I go to college. You stay here.”

“Here,” Stiles says.

“You stay here,” Derek repeats.

Stiles chews his bottom lip.

“But I’m going to talk to you every day, if you want,” Derek says. “On the laptop. Okay?”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and tries to pack his track pants again.

“No,” Derek says again. “You stay here.”

Derek worries that Stiles doesn’t understand, but he smiles when Derek gives up on packing for the moment and gets his laptop. They watch _Dora the Explorer_ , and Stiles adds another two words to his ever-increasing vocabulary: backpack, and map.

Derek isn’t sure what’s going on in Stiles’s head. He doesn’t seem to be overwhelmed, like he was that first night, when he uses his words. Derek wonders if it’s frightening, suddenly standing on the edge of a whole new world, or if Stiles isn’t bothered at all. While he can communicate, he still can’t _explain_. Derek has no idea if he remembers where he came from at all, or if learning to speak again is like coming awake from a strange dream and whatever happened before is unreal to him. Maybe this point now marks some kind of rebirth, and Stiles will forget his feral past, and what came before it, as though it never happened.

“One day, I will have so many questions for you,” Derek tells him.

Stiles plays with the top button on Derek’s shirt and hums contentedly.

 

***

 

Breakfast the next morning is a muted affair. Stiles seems curious when the kids all hug Derek and Peter, and Derek knows he has no idea what’s coming. When Peter brings his suitcases down and puts them by the front door, Stiles frowns at them, then seems to shake off his sudden unease as he heads into the kitchen for his post-breakfast snack.

“Watch how much he’s eating,” Derek tells his dad. “He’ll make himself sick if you give him the chance.”

“We’ll watch him,” James promises.

“He needs to eat more vegetables.”

“More vegetables, less cookies,” James agrees. He smiles, and wrinkles appear at the corners of his eyes. “We know, Der.”

God. He doesn’t want to leave Stiles. He really doesn’t.

Peter, humming, takes his suitcases out to the car, and Derek fetches his bags from upstairs. While he’s there he picks up Wolfie from the floor and sets him on the bed. A dull ache starts in his stomach when he thinks of Stiles sleeping alone now. When he thinks of himself sleeping alone. It’s ridiculous how easy it is to sleep curled up with Stiles, even though Stiles is all elbows and knees and sharp angles and snuffling sounds, and Derek probably hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in months.

Stiles always wakes him up, either by tossing and turning and grumpily thumping the blankets into lumpy shapes that suit him, or because he suddenly has to wake Derek up to point out the moth pinging against the light, or the funny face he just figured out how to pull.

This hurts.

Derek lugs his bags downstairs.

Stiles pads out of the kitchen, clutching an apple. He looks at Derek with his head on an angle, and his footsteps falter.

Derek closes the distance between them, and folds him into a hug. “It’s only sixteen weeks, and I’ll come home when I can on weekends.”

Stiles makes a small, anxious sound.

“Be good, okay?” Derek holds him closer. “I’ll miss you.”

Stiles doesn’t hug him back. He’s suddenly tense, frozen.

Derek releases him, and carries his bags outside.

He knows it’s a mistake the second he slings his bags into the car.

The pack files out to wave them off, and suddenly Stiles is pushing between them.

Suddenly Stiles knows what’s happening.

“No!” Stiles screams. “No, Derek!”

Peter leans against the driver’s side door, swinging the keys around his finger. He’d told Derek they needed to be on the road at least an hour ago to beat the traffic, but he hasn’t complained at all when Derek’s intentionally dragged his feet. And now, Derek wishes they’d already left, because the sound of Stiles screaming for him breaks his heart.   

James holds Stiles by one arm, and Talia holds the other.

“No!” Stiles screams again, and sags down so that they’re struggling to keep him off the ground. His face is tear-stained. “No!”

And now all the kids are crying too, because Stiles is inconsolable, and Derek’s never had a farewell as fucking miserable as this one.

“Derek! No!”

Derek climbs into the car and pulls the door shut behind him.

Peter slides into the driver’s seat and starts the engine.

“He’s not ready,” Derek says, his voice breaking.

“I told you he wasn’t,” Peter says in a low voice.

“But he _needs_ to do this.”

“Does he?” Peter asks mildly.

“Just drive,” Derek says, and turns his face to the window so that Peter doesn’t see he’s tearing up. It’s pointless. He knows Peter can tell anyway.

 

***

 

Leaving was a mistake. Derek has text messages from most of the pack by the time he’s back in his dorm room at Stanford, telling him exactly how big a mistake it was. Laura says that Stiles hasn’t stopped crying all day. William says it’s not too late to come home. Alex says Stiles won’t come out from under Derek’s bed. Malia tells him to get his ass back to Beacon Hills and shut his damn puppy up.

Oh God. He should never have left.

It’s too late now to turn around and go home though.

He spends a restless night lying awake and thinking of Stiles, and wishing he was there to make it right.

In the morning he checks his phone again. There’s a text from his mom:

 _He ate breakfast with us this morning. Crisis averted_.

Derek tries to feel relieved at that. A part of him, the largest part of him, had wanted Stiles to need him as desperately as he had the day before, so that he could turn around and go home again. But if Stiles is eating with the pack, Derek knows he will be fine, eventually.

He just wishes he could say the same about himself.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

Derek doesn’t remember hating college this much.

It’s not the course work or the timetable, or his roommate, or the social scene. All of those things are exactly what he remembers. It’s just that Derek doesn’t want to be here anymore. Well, he does. He wants to be an architect. It’s just that right now he wishes he was at home in Beacon Hills, with Stiles. He concentrates on his work, and promises himself that in two weeks he can go home for the weekend. Peter is heading home and has offered him a lift.

In the meantime, there is Skype. And it’s a disaster.

“Hi, Derek!” Alex waves the first time, before he’s shoved out of the frame by a wide-eyed Stiles. “No, don’t touch the—”

Stiles’s fingers are already on the keyboard.

Derek’s screen goes blank.

They reconnect a few minutes later. This time Stiles is sitting down, a cookie in each hand, and Alex is hovering behind him to make sure he doesn’t press anything he shouldn’t. He keeps wriggling though, so Derek can mostly only see his shirt, and sometimes a fistful of cookie as he waves it around.

“Hi, Stiles.” Derek can’t stop the smile spreading over his face.

“Derek?” Stiles leans in toward the screen.

“How are you?”

“Derek!” Stiles pokes the screen, his finger looming large toward the webcam for a second before it vanishes out of shot.

“You can’t touch him,” Alex tells him. “You just _talk_ , okay?”

Except maybe Stiles thinks Derek is suddenly only as interactive as _Dora the Explorer_. He doesn’t talk. He clamps his mouth shut and watches, so Derek talks instead. He tells Stiles about school, and how the food here isn’t as nice as at home, and how he hopes he’s being good and clever, and not driving everyone mad.

Stiles keeps trying to look behind the screen.

“I miss you,” Derek tells him.

Stiles frowns at him suddenly, and pushes the laptop away. By the time it’s repositioned, Stiles is gone and Alex is looking guiltily at the screen.

“Sorry, Der. I thought he’d be okay with it.”

“Not your fault,” Derek says, forcing a smile. It’s been a week. He didn’t expect a miracle, he supposes. Stiles is obviously still upset, or maybe newly upset because of the call, and it was probably too much to hope that he’d sit still and talk. And definitely too much to hope that he’d have some way to convey with his newly discovered words that he misses Derek too.

They agree that they’ll Skype once a week, every Sunday night, except the next week Alex tells him that Stiles refuses.

It hurts more than Derek is prepared to admit.

He throws himself back into his work, and into an assignment that requires a team. A team that, with differing schedules, can only meet up on the weekends to work together.

“It’s not a bad thing, Derek,” Talia says when he calls to tell her he won’t make it home the next weekend after all. “You just concentrate on your studies, and let us worry about Stiles.”

Except Derek still worries about Stiles.

He can’t turn it off that easily, not after months when every minute of every day was about him. He feels anchorless now, adrift, and he _misses_ him.

When Peter gets back from his weekend home, he invites Derek out to dinner. There’s an Italian place just off campus that he frequents, and Derek meets him there on Monday evening. Peter’s already ordered the wine.

“He’s fine,” he says, waving Derek’s concern away before Derek can even ask the question. “As stubborn and intractable as always. Mark’s starting him on some grade school basics, and that is _not_ going well. They get as far as ‘C is for cookie’ and his attention span is all shot to hell.”

Derek snorts over his menu. “Sounds interesting.”

Peter takes a sip of his wine. “It was hilarious, actually.”

Derek lets his uncle guide the conversation around to other topics. The pack is fine. Malia is still persistently failing English, which has more to do with her attitude than her academic ability. Peter wonders aloud if she’s trying to punish him. She knows how importantly he rates a college education, and he suspects she’s sabotaging her chances of getting one just to get a rise out of him.

Around campus, things are much the same as last semester. Peter has a reasonable bunch of senior students, and his freshman class is still as annoying as hell. Apparently they’ve commented on Rate My Professor that he’s the most fuckable teacher in the department.

Peter shrugs.

Derek rolls his eyes. “Don’t pretend you’re not flattered.”

“Please,” Peter says, tearing into a piece of garlic bread. “They’re mostly intellectual midgets. I only fuck interesting people.”

“That’s more than I ever wants to know about my uncle’s sex life, thanks,” Derek mutters.

Peter rolls his eyes. “It happens to be good advice.”

“Really? Because everyone else I’ve ever known thinks it’s a bad idea to fuck the crazy ones.”

“I didn’t say crazy, I said _interesting_.” Peter’s smile grows. “Although, the two do tend to overlap more often than not. Anyway, I’ll have you know that I give excellent relationship advice.”

“Uh huh,” Derek deadpans. “Like that time when I was in high school and you told me I should ask Kate Argent out.”

Peter makes a face. “All right, so I was wrong on that score.” Derek and Kate had dated for two weeks before she’d accused him of seeing someone else and set his car on fire. His _car_. And Derek had been in it at the time. Nothing like a police report and a restraining order to end a relationship. “But I’ll bet the sex was fantastic.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Derek says drily. “We never got that far.”

“Ouch.” Peter winces. “Anyway, I think I’ll be good for you to be back at school. You should go to a few parties, hook up with some interesting—not crazy—people, and have some fun.”

“Stop trying to live through me vicariously.”

“Oh, please.” Peter snorts. “I get more action in a month than you get in a year.”

He’s probably right.

“I’ll pay for dinner if you promise not to give me the details,” Derek tells him.

Peter laughs.

 

***

 

It takes a few weeks, but Derek eventually remembers that he likes college. Stiles is still reluctant to talk on Skype, but he sometimes comes and peers at the screen when Derek’s talking to someone else in the pack. He seems settled again, and happy, and Derek really shouldn’t be as upset about that as he is. Except he misses Stiles. He misses _this_ Stiles, and he knows things will be different when he gets home again. Stiles will be different. Derek’s supposed to want that, except he misses him.

He’s fucked up.

He takes Peter’s advice and goes out to a few parties, and even hooks up with a few people. None of them are anything serious, and everyone’s okay with that. That’s what college is all about, after all. And while it’s nice to get laid once in a while, it’s not the sex that Derek finds himself craving. It’s the warmth of a body lying in bed with him.

It’s all Stiles’s fault.

Derek misses close contact. He misses hugs. He misses the way Stiles used to snuffle against his neck.

Even Derek knows how unhealthy this is. He shouldn’t be conflating his previous intimacy with Stiles with what he gets from his one night stands. Or, more precisely, he shouldn’t be comparing his one night stands to Stiles, and finding them lacking. What he had with Stiles was nothing to do with sex. It was _innocent_.

He emails his mom and tells her he’s not coming home until the end of semester.

It will be better for Stiles if he doesn’t.

His mom sends him reports on Stiles’s progress. He’s talking a lot more, but not about his past. If he’s asked, he doesn’t answer. She’s not sure if that’s because he doesn’t remember, or because he doesn’t yet have the words to explain. But he’s doing very well. Talia thinks that by the time Derek is home again, she’ll have Stiles moved into his own room.

That’s a good thing. Derek has to remind himself that’s a good thing.

It’s what he wanted.

It’s what they both needed.

 

***

 

Derek throws himself into his work.

Missing a semester means that he’s in new classes with new classmates. He finds himself hanging out a lot with Vernon Boyd. They argue about Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid. They bond a lot over their shared enthusiasm for creating environmentally friendly designs, with carbon neutral footprints. They submit a joint design for an assignment for an office block. With the roof garden acting as insulation, and the solar panels used as a feature—fixed on sails so they can be turned to the best angle to get the most sunlight—the building can theoretically produce enough extra electricity to feed back into the grid. Derek’s not entirely happy with the design, but Boyd convinces him that it’s more important to keep it functional and affordable. Not every building can be the Guggenheim which, although Boyd admits is ‘impressive as all fuck’, is hardly in the budget of most construction companies, and probably wastes a shitload of electricity and water.

Their design gets them both a distinction, and their professor submits it to a few competitions.

Derek finds himself hanging out with Boyd and his girlfriend Erica most nights. They’re fun, and, more than that, they’re comfortable. They’re the sort of people Derek feels like he could have known his whole life. Making friends with them makes the semester go more quickly than Derek could have imagined during those first horrible few days. Boyd and Erica also have the knack of never making Derek feel like a third wheel, apart from the time when Erica tries unsuccessfully to set Derek up with her friend Isaac. Luckily Isaac has a sense of humor about the entire situation too.

Derek is actually surprised when the end of semester creeps up on him so quickly. He has his usual panic about exams—stupid, because he’s studied—and then, suddenly, it’s time to go.

Home.

Pack.

Family.

 _Stiles_.

He’s nervous.

Peter picks him up the morning after his final exam. The day is overcast but Peter’s wearing dark sunglasses, and Derek can smell the wolfsbane-laced alcohol still seeping out of his pores.

“I’ll drive,” he says.

Peter doesn’t even try to complain. “The department put on a little end of semester celebration last night, and it turns out I’m not as young as I once was.”

“Coffee?” Derek asks as he starts the car.

“You are a beautiful angel,” Peter mutters, then proceeds to fall asleep.

He wakes up again when they stop for breakfast, and orders a black coffee and a plain bagel.

“I feel like there’s a valuable lesson about life choices in this for me somewhere,” Derek muses over his bacon and eggs.

“No, no lesson,” Peter says. “I fought valiantly. I have no regrets.”

Derek sips his coffee.

Peter peers at him over the top of his sunglasses. “Although, a lesser man might comment on the fact that we actually stopped for breakfast instead of getting coffee from the nearest drive through.”

“You looked liked you needed something more substantial,” Derek tells him.

Peter smiles slightly. “Again, a lesser man would point out the fact that you would usually take the opportunity to torture me by not stopping.”

“I think you’re getting us confused. I’m not a professional sadist.”

“Neither am I,” Peter grins. “I’m merely a gifted amateur.”

Derek snorts.

Peter picks at his bagel. “You’re worried he’s changed.”

Derek doesn’t answer.

“Well, he has,” Peter tells him. “I’ve been back for a few weekends, when you were mysteriously busy and unavailable, and he _has_ changed. But that’s not a bad thing.”

“I know it’s not.”

“Are you sure you know it?”

Derek sighs. “I know he won’t be the same person as when I left. It’s _why_ I left.”

“I’m hearing a lot of logic, but very little emotion.” Peter leans his elbows on the table. “You don’t have to like it, you know. You’re allowed to be a little bit sorry that maybe he won’t cling to you like a baby possum anymore. You don’t have to be perfectly selfless all the time, Derek.”

“It’s not about me.” Derek shoves a piece of bacon in his mouth.

Peter sighs. “Where the hell does this borderline martyr complex come from? It can’t be genetic, that’s for sure. Derek, of course it’s about you. It’s about how you _feel_. And maybe I’ve watched too much daytime television lately, but your feelings do actually matter, and you’re doing yourself a disservice by not acknowledging them.”

Derek is silent for a moment. Then he says, “You’re right.”

Peter looks vaguely surprised. “I am?”

“Yes,” Derek says. “You’ve been watching too much daytime television.”

Peter throws his bagel at his face.

 

***

 

Peter has more or less recovered by the time they set out again, but he’s happy to let Derek drive. And Derek’s happy to be distracted by Peter’s complaints about the stack of exams he has to grade.

“I mean, why would you take art history if you can’t even spell Michelangelo? And this isn’t a freshman, Derek, this is a senior!” Peter flicks through the radio channels until he finds a song he likes. “This is why I drink.”

“Right,” Derek agrees, although he knows it isn’t. The problem isn’t when Peter goes out and has fun and gets shitfaced with his colleagues. The problem is when Peter sits alone with a bottle of whiskey and contemplates all the ways he thinks he’s fucked up his life.

“And the grammar mistakes! I’m not a grade school teacher. I shouldn’t have to deal with students who don’t know what a dangling modifier is.”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t know what a dangling modifier is,” Derek tells him.

“Lucky you’re not in my classes then,” Peter says.

“I wholeheartedly agree.”

Peter rolls his eyes, then winces, and then suffers his hangover in silence for a while. When Derek looks over at him next, he’s fallen asleep again.

They reach Beacon Hills a little after lunchtime.

Derek’s heartbeat ratchets up as they drive through the town and he takes the turnoff that leads out to the Preserve. Peter is awake again, and sending a text.

“Just letting your mother know we’re almost there.”

Derek nods tersely.

He knows Peter can hear his heartbeat, and that he knows the reason he’s suddenly so nervous, but Peter doesn’t comment.

When they pull up in front of the house, most of the pack is waiting. Derek hardly even sees them. His gaze goes straight to the slim boy standing on the front porch, half-hidden in the shade.

_Stiles._

Stiles hangs back when the rest of the family comes forward to greet them. Derek watches him over Laura’s shoulder as they hug.

It’s been sixteen weeks.

Stiles looks different. Warier. Subdued.

Derek walks toward him.

Stiles watches him, lifting his chin. His jaw is clenched, and he’s wearing the stubborn frown that Derek has missed so much.

Derek steps up onto the porch. “Hey, Stiles,” he says, his voice catching a little. “I missed you.”

He doesn’t know what he expects Stiles to say. He doesn’t know what he wants to hear. _Anything_ , he thinks. He just wants to hear Stiles speak.

Stiles stares.

“Stiles?” Derek asks, aware that the rest of the pack is watching in silence.

Stiles doesn’t say anything. He just turns on his heel and goes back inside the house, slamming the door shut behind him.

The sound reverberates in the awful quiet.

Derek feels something inside him break. 


	11. Chapter 11

It’s not the homecoming Derek had hoped for.

Stiles hates him.

“He doesn’t _hate_ you,” Alex says, dragging Derek’s bags upstairs. “He’s just…he’s really pissed.”

Derek’s room isn’t how he left it at all. The bed is neatly made—no blankets lumped up just how Stiles likes them—and there are no socks on the floor. Everything on his shelves is neat. Nobody has been inspecting things and rearranging things, or helping themselves to things just because they feel like it. The room is clean and all in order. Derek wonders how long it’s been since Stiles has even been in here.

Alex sits on his bed. He’s grown his hair out in the past few months. It curls at the ends now. He’s also wearing nail polish. His bare toes, poking out the bottom of a pair of ratty old jeans, are also colored. He chews his pink thumbnail while he watches Derek unpack. “He’ll come around. I mean, you’re his favorite.”

“It’s okay,” Derek says firmly. “I knew there was a good chance he’d react that way. And as long as he’s doing well, that’s what matters. Meanwhile, why don’t you tell me what’s up with you lately?”

Alex shrugs.

Derek shoves his clothes in his drawers. “School okay?”

“I guess.” Another shrug, but Derek isn’t sure if Alex deflecting, or if he’s just a typical teenager, uninterested in talking about school.

Derek sits down on the bed next to him. “And how’s the cafeteria?”

He still remembers when the word got around about Alex, and suddenly none of his so-called friends would sit next to him at lunch. It was all Talia could do to stop Malia and Cora from going straight down to the middle school and completely losing their shit. Derek’s pretty sure he would have gone with them, and given those little assholes something to really talk about. Even Matty’s friends, who’d worshipped Alex because he was Matty’s cool big brother, hadn’t wanted to sit with him. Matty, to his credit, had stepped up and sat alone with Alex at lunch, even though when he’d come home he’d yelled at Alex for being weird and making him lose all his friends too. Talia had very swiftly put Matty in his place, but Derek couldn’t completely blame him. He was a kid too, and he’d been just as unfairly treated as Alex.

For a while, Alex had eaten his lunch in the library every day.

“I sit with the loser kids now,” Alex says, making a face. “But guess what?”

“What?”

Alex smiles. “They’re not really losers at all. They’re kind of cool.”

“I’ll bet they are.”

“And there’s this one kid, Jason, he’s popular and stuff. He’s in the year above me, and he plays basketball, and I think he kind of wants to be my friend.”

Derek can smell the embarrassment coming from his brother. “Your friend?”

Alex wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know. He’s kind of…I don’t know. Sometimes I just want to shoot hoops with him, but other times…I mean, it’s weird, right? That sometimes I want to be his buddy, but sometimes I want to be his girlfriend?”

“It’s not weird.” Derek puts an arm around Alex’s shoulders. “And what does Jason think about it?”

“He said he thinks I’m sort of okay.” Alex ducks his head. “And last week he tried to kiss me, except I ran away.”

Derek squeezes his shoulders. “Well, that’s good. You’re way too young to be going around kissing people,” he says in a teasing tone.

“Shut up.” Alex elbows him. “I kind of want to invite him over or something, but I can’t do that, can I? Not with Stiles here.”

“No.” It’s hard to remember that Stiles is a secret. That he has to stay that way. And, for an already socially isolated kid like Alex, who doesn’t get invited to hang with other kids in public places, that not being able to invite people over might be hurting him. “Tell you what. Now I’m home, maybe you can invite Jason to a movie or something. I can drive you there. And I promise I’ll sit a few rows in front, and won’t turn around the whole time. If that’s something you want to do.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Alex shrugs. “I’m already the weird kid. Maybe he won’t want to go to the movies with me like that. Someone would see us. He probably won’t want people to know he likes me.”

Derek presses his lips to the top of Alex’s head. He remembers it being hard enough when he was thirteen and liked someone, and put himself out there risking rejection and ridicule. Alex has already suffered enough of that to last a lifetime. Derek wants to protect him from any more, but he also wants Alex to be proud of who he is, and brave enough to try and grab some happiness.

“Well, think about it,” Derek tells him. “The offer stands, if you want to do it.”

He becomes aware of a third heartbeat thumping wildly, and looks up to see Stiles leaning in the doorway. Stiles smells anxious, the tangy scent of his nerves sharp in the air.

“Stiles,” Derek says quietly.

Alex looks up. “Hey, Stiles. I was just telling Derek how you don’t hate him.”

Stiles chews his bottom lip and looks between them.

“Except, if you want to punch him in the face, that’d be cool,” Alex offers.

Derek’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really? You want him to punch me in the face?”

Alex doesn’t even look apologetic. “You could take a punch.”

Stiles snorts slightly.

Alex stands up. “Anyway, I’m gonna go and let you two hug it out, or punch it out, or whatever works best for you.”

He shoulders Stiles as he passes, and Stiles flicks him on the ear.

“Asshole,” Alex tells him.

“You are!” Stiles shoots back.

Derek shakes his head and smiles. When he’d left, Stiles could just about demand food and whine about brushing his teeth. Apparently now he’s already reached the level of fluency required to be a teenage douchebag. Derek isn’t sure if that’s an improvement or not. Derek’s smile fades as Stiles turns his face to look at him.

“You left,” Stiles says, his face grave. “You _left_.”

“I’m sorry,” Derek tells him. “I thought it was the right thing to do.”

He still thinks it was the right thing to do, because Stiles is standing in front of him, and he’s _talking_. He’s not chattering like a fox or babbling like a toddler. He’s talking.

Stiles juts out his chin. “Why?”

The word hits Derek like a punch to the stomach. “Because I thought it would be better for you. For us.”

He can’t read the expression in Stiles’s face. Can’t read what’s going on behind those big, honey-colored eyes. Stiles’s heartbeat is still racing, and his hands are curled into loose fists as though he really does intend to take Alex’s advice and punch Derek in the face.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I didn’t want to make you sad.”

Stiles curls his fingers around the doorframe. “You made me cry.”

Derek’s throat aches. “I’m sorry.”

“You left,” Stiles repeats, and though he’s trying to make Derek understand the gravity of that. “You _left_.”

“I know.” Derek swallows painfully. “And I’m sorry that it hurt you. I missed—”

“Shut up,” Stiles says suddenly, tensing.

Derek searches his face. “Okay.”

“Don’t say that. Ever.”

“Okay,” Derek repeats.

Stiles relaxes slightly. His fingers uncurl. He chews his lower lip for a little while. And then he looks strangely tentative and shy. “Want to see my room?”

Derek smiles. “Okay.”

 

***

 

Stiles takes Derek by the hand and tugs him along to see his room. Derek curls his fingers around Stiles’s, and, every moment that they’re touching, he relaxes a little bit more. Stiles’s grip is familiar, warm and comfortable, and it feels right. Being close to him, touching, feels right. Derek wants to scent him.

Stiles’s room is the old box room on the third floor. Stiles opens the door proudly, and pulls Derek inside. It’s a small space, with room for a bed and a dresser and not much else. It’s been painted since Derek saw it last. Instead of plain white walls, there are random swathes of color reaching up to the ceiling. Yellow and blue and pink and orange. The effect is a little weird and off-putting, but Stiles smiles shyly when he points the walls out.

“You painted this?” Derek asks him.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Mom said I could.”

It makes Derek fill with warmth to hear Stiles call Talia that. Home. Pack. Family. Stiles.

“It looks great,” Derek says, making a split-second decision that okay, it’s a little odd, but if Stiles likes it, it’s perfect.

He looks around the room. There’s a collection of bent sticks and shiny river rocks on the top of the dresser, as well as two Batman trading cards, a can of deodorant, three pennies, a feather, a bottle cap, and a green pencil.

Stiles has at least four comforters on his bed, tangled together and molded into a nest. Derek’s old wolf plushie is sitting on top of Stiles’s pillow, staring at him with lopsided glass eyes. There’s a book lying on the pillow beside it. A kid’s picture book. He wonders if Stiles still likes to just look at the pictures, or if he can read the words now too.

“This is nice,” he says.

Stiles nods. His face is grave again.

“Can I hug you, Stiles?” Derek asks, afraid that Stiles will refuse.

For a moment Stiles’s expression give nothing away, and then he blinks and his eyes shine with tears. He sags slightly, as though he’s been holding himself too stiffly for too long, and steps forward into Derek’s arms. Derek almost chokes with relief to find himself holding him again: his weight, his warmth, and his unique scent.

Stiles might be quick to hurt, but he’s also quick to forgive, and Derek is beyond grateful for that. He’s _missed_ this.

He runs his hand over Stiles’s head, and curls his fingers around the nape of his neck. Leaves his scent on his pale skin. “Stiles?”

“Mmm?” Stiles turns his face into Derek’s throat. His breath is hot when he sighs.

Derek doesn’t want to push him, not after he’s already given so much, but he has to know. “The thing you don’t want me to say. Why not?”

Stiles digs his fingers into Derek’s back and shakes his head. He makes a small hurt noise.

“Did someone say that to you once? Someone who didn’t come back?”

Stiles sniffles, and tightens his grip on Derek. “Don’t go! Don’t say it!”

“I won’t say it,” Derek tells him. “I won’t—” _Shit_. He was a second away from making a promise he can’t keep. “I have one more semester, Stiles. One more.”

“Don’t go!” Stiles rubs his wet face against Derek’s throat. “Derek!”

“I’ll stay!” The words are out before Derek can even consider the complications. Another deferment, explaining himself to Boyd and Erica, and Jesus, to his _mom_. Asking Uncle William to push back his starting date at the firm again, and indefinitely this time… Derek is a fucking idiot. But he _owes_ Stiles this. He owes him for the last four months. He’s a fucking idiot, but he doesn’t regret saying it. “I’ll stay, okay, Stiles?”

Stiles sobs, his body shaking in Derek’s embrace. “Don’t go!”

He doesn’t believe Derek, and why should he?

“I won’t,” Derek says again. “I won’t go, Stiles.”

He closes his eyes and holds Stiles for as long as he can.

He wants it to be forever.

 

***

 

“I had a feeling we’d be having this conversation,” Talia says, closing her laptop as Derek takes a seat on the other side of her desk. “I wasn’t sure it would be right away though.”

“What conversation?”

Talia raises her eyebrows. “The one where you tell me you’re deferring. Again.”

Derek flushes. “I was going to ask—”

“No,” his mom tells him. “You weren’t.”

Stiles is peering anxiously around the doorway.

“Come in, Stiles,” Talia says.

Stiles sidles inside, chewing his lower lip. He takes the seat next to Derek, and stares at his lap like he thinks he’s in trouble. He isn’t, Derek knows. He’s not so sure about himself though.

“I promised Stiles I wouldn’t leave again,” Derek says.

“What about school?”

“I can defer again,” Derek says. He sighs. “Maybe I can take a few classes online, or maybe, next year…” He trails off, unwilling to even mention going back to Stanford with Stiles sitting beside him. “And maybe William will let me work with him in the meantime. As an intern or something. I’m not quitting. Just…just I can’t go back. Not now.”

Talia regards him silently for a moment. Then she nods. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.” Talia smiles faintly, like she knows he was expecting more of a fight, just like last time. “If this is what you want, then yes, okay. You can stay.”

“Derek can stay?” Stiles asks tentatively.

“Yes, sweetheart, Derek can stay.”

Stiles blinks, and then wipes his eyes with the heels of his hands. Then he sniffles and clears his throat. He shows Derek a shaky smile. “Derek, wanna watch TV?”

“I would love to,” Derek says. “Dora?”

Stiles makes a face. “Dora is for babies.”

Derek can’t stop himself from grinning. Yeah, he’s going to have to get to know Stiles all over again, and he can’t wait.

 

***

 

Before dinner, Derek goes looking for Stiles and finds him in Peter’s bedroom, lying on his stomach on the floor, coloring pencils strewn out around him. He’s scribbling in a thick sketchbook. Peter is lying on his bed reading.

Derek arches his brows.

“It’s our own little brand of art therapy,” Peter says, gesturing toward Stiles. “It’s something we’ve played around with a few times before, right Stiles?”

Stiles grunts, twisting around to try and locate whatever pencil he’s decided he needs.

Derek wonders what else he’s missed because of all the weekends he couldn’t bring himself to come home.

He moves into the room and sits down near Stiles. “What’re you drawing?”

Stiles shrugs.

“That’s the beauty of it. Derek,” Peter says. “There are no rules. It doesn’t have to be a scene, or a memory, or anything at all. Sometimes it can just be how he feels.”

Stiles nods, and chews on the end of a pencil.

“We were talking a bit about what it might be like if Stiles thought about the time from before he was with the foxes,” Peter says, keeping his voice neutral, “and Stiles decided to draw this.”

Derek can’t quite make out if the picture is meant to be anything. It’s made up of dark swirls of colors. It’s a maelstrom. There’s something frightening about it, something primeval and chaotic. It’s not a scene, it’s an emotion. If Derek had to label it, he’d say it was fear.

Stiles doesn’t seem afraid as he draws it though. Maybe it’s cathartic.

“Was it you who told him to paint his room?” Derek asks.

Peter smiles. “Oh, you’re one of the privileged few who’ve seen that. There are a lot of happy colors on that wall, wouldn’t you say?”

“We keep the bad ones in the book,” Stiles says, and pats his sketchbook. “Not on the walls.”

“Well, no,” Peter says mildly. “We wouldn’t want to go to sleep surrounded by our bad colors.”

Stiles hums in agreement.

Derek holds Peter’s gaze for a moment. He searches it for something hard-edged, but Peter only smiles slightly in response. There’s no malice in this. There’s nothing sharp. This is a side of Peter that people, even members of his own pack, rarely see and, if they do, they usually look for an ulterior motive. It’s not like Peter’s given many people a reason to think the best of him in the past.

“Thank you for doing this for him,” Derek says.

“Pfft.” Peter rolls his eyes. “I’m not doing anything. I’m not even out of pocket. I stole all the supplies from Stanford.”

Of course he did.

“You are the devil,” Derek tells him.

Peter smiles broadly. “Guilty as charged. What do you think, Stiles?”

Stiles looks up, gives an evil cackle of approval, and concentrates on his drawing again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, today the edits from hell landed in my inbox. Long story short: can you make a gazillion changes, add about 12 000 words, and have it back in a week? (Please note, I love my editor, and everything she says makes my books better, I just hate the part where I actually have to work!) So I will definitely try to keep up the pace on Little Wild Animal as well, but, frankly, there may be days when I can't manage it. 
> 
> Thanks for understanding!


	12. Chapter 12

Being at home again and seeing Stiles interact with the rest of the pack is revelatory. Stiles has grown unsurprisingly close with Alex. He’s also close with Laura’s husband Mark, who spends an hour before dinner each night reading with him. He’s a quick learner, Mark tells Derek. He needs to work on his concentration, but he’s obviously learned to read before and it’s just a matter of practicing. He gets easily frustrated because he’s smart.

Derek sees it first hand when Stiles is trying to explain something, but doesn’t have the vocabulary yet.

“No!” he tells Matty when Matty wants to play some shoot-em-up video game with him. “I don’t like it.”

“It’s good!” Matty fires back. “You just know I’ll kick your ass!”

“No!” Stiles scowls. “It’s bad! It’s bad and, and—” He growls in his throat, and huffs out a breath. “I don’t like it!”

“Don’t be dumb!”

“Mom says you can’t call me dumb!”

Derek intervenes before one of them draws blood. “Stiles? Come outside with me for a minute.”

Stiles stomps out into the back yard with him. He paces back and forth in front of the chicken coop, muttering under his breath. He’s taut with tension, glowering, fists clenched.

“Take a breath,” Derek advises him, and sits down. He picks up a fallen leaf and begins to tear it apart slowly.

Stiles works his temper out by kicking the ground a few times, then sits down cross-legged on the grass beside Derek.

“You okay?” Derek asks him.

Stiles draws a deep breath. “I don’t want to play the game.”

“You don’t have to.”

“It has, it has bad colors, and red blood. I don’t like it.” He groans, and knocks his knuckles against his temple. “It’s bad.”

“Don’t do that.” Derek reaches out and grabs his wrist. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

Stiles groans.

“I think it makes you angry with yourself when you can’t think of the right words,” Derek tells him, “but you shouldn’t be. You need to give yourself a break.”

“It’s bad when people go,” Stiles says, scowling at the chickens. “It’s bad when they go and they can’t come back because there’s _blood_. Red blood. I don’t like the game because there’s blood!”

“It gives you bad memories?”

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut and nods sharply. “Mom…”

“You want Mom?”

Stiles’s eyes flash open. “No! My—my mom!”

Derek’s breath catches. “Your real mom. You remember your real mom.”

He tries to reach out for Stiles, but Stiles is lurching to his feet suddenly, and stumbling toward the tree line. He’s hunched over, his elbows out, all sharp angles. He doesn’t want to be touched. He’s making the sorts of whining, whimpering noises he did when Derek first found him. A hurt little animal.

Derek follows him.

Stiles makes it several paces into the trees, and then drop onto his knees. He curls over himself, his back arched like a bow, and starts to retch. Derek crouches behind him and puts a hand on his spine.

“N-no!” Stiles shuffles forward on his knees, and stops to retch again. This time he vomits and then, suddenly, he can’t breathe. High, panicked sounds squeeze out of him, and he’s trying to suck in air, but he’s not getting any, or he’s not getting enough, and he’s choking on nothing.

Derek, kneeling behind him, gets his arms around Stiles’s chest and pulls him upright. The noises he’s making become more dire—Derek’s instinct was to give him more space to breathe, but apparently that hasn’t worked—and Derek lets him hunch forward again. Stiles’s fingers scrabble against the forest floor, through the leaf litter and the dirt, and for a horrible moment Derek thinks he’s actually going to die. His face is red, and his eyes have rolled back in his head, and it’s like he’s _drowning_.

“Stiles,” Derek says, his own heart racing. “Stiles!”

Stiles goes limp suddenly, and collapses onto the ground.

“Stiles!” Derek rolls him onto his side, jamming two fingers against his throat. He can feel the fast, thready pulse of Stiles’s jugular under his touch. He’s breathing. He’s _breathing_. Derek stares down at his pale face, and rubs a smear of dirt off his cheekbone.

He has no idea what the hell just happened.

He lifts Stiles up into his arms and carries him back toward the house.

 

***

 

“It sounds like a panic attack,” Deaton says matter-of-factly when he checks Stiles over.

Stiles is asleep on his bed, his dark lashes resting against his pale cheeks. His mouth is slightly open, and his chest rises and falls steadily as he breathes.

Deaton lays a hand over Stiles’s chest, over his heartbeat. “He’ll be fine.”

“Fine?” Derek rasps. “He couldn’t…he couldn’t _breathe_.”

“He’ll be fine,” Deaton repeats. “But, if it happens again, you need to know how to help calm him. Talk to him, count breaths with him. It might help if he took up some breathing exercises in the meantime, so he’s got something to fall back on if he gets another attack. How do you feel about yoga?”

Derek raises his brows. “Generally hostile.”

Deaton actually smiles. He pats Derek on his shoulder as he leaves Stiles’s room. “Well, of course it’s only a suggestion. You don’t _have_ to do it.”

It’s blatant emotional manipulation.

It could help Stiles.

Derek knows he’ll be saluting the sun in less than a week.

 

***

 

Stiles grunts in frustration as a leaf lands on his wet canvas. “Fucker.”

Derek looks at him over the edge of his book. “I liked it better when you didn’t know those words.”

“Don’t lie,” Stiles says, picking the leaf off and dropping on the ground.

From the hammock where he’s allegedly sleeping, Peter chortles a little.

Painting outside is not without its challenges, but it’s easier to clean up than inside. The sunroom floor is still worse for wear after Stiles’s first attempt with acrylics. And even though they’re outside, Stiles is wearing a paint smock made from an old sheet, and has managed to get paint in his hair already.

Derek likes watching him work. When he concentrates, for those brief moments between episodes of flailing and jumping around, it’s amazing. A stillness settles over him, and he seems almost like a different person. He’s calm and quiet and focused, and painting gets him there a hell of a lot quicker than yoga.

Derek reads a few more pages of his book, looking up every now and then to check on Stiles.

Stiles is intent on his painting.

He paints with the brushes that Peter provided—stolen from Stanford—but also with his fingers. Peter says he has a style that lands somewhere between Primitivism and Expressionism. He says Stiles reminds him of an untrained Gauguin.

Derek sets his book down at last and goes to sit beside Stiles. “That’s nice.”

“Mmm.” Stiles sucks on the end of a paintbrush and tilts his head on an angle to look at the canvas.

At first Derek thinks it’s a self-portrait. He’s painted a pale face with an upturned nose, and eyes the color of dark honey. There is even a smattering of moles across the face. Then Stiles sticks his fingers into the brown paint and swirls them along the canvas to make long hair, and Derek realizes it’s a woman’s face. A woman’s face, against a background of green leaves.

“My mom,” Stiles says, and Derek thinks he’s saying it more to himself than to him. His mouth thins into an unhappy line, and he frowns, the skin around his eyes tightening. “My _first_ mom.”

Derek’s aware that Peter’s eyes are open, and he’s watching from the hammock.

“It’s good,” Derek says. “Beautiful.”

“It’s not right,” Stiles says. He wipes his fingers on his smock, then stares down at his tray of paints. He picks up a clean paintbrush and stirs it rapidly in his jar of water. When it’s dripping, he jams it into the red paint, and pulls it out again. Then he draws his arm back and flicks a burst of fat red drops of watery red paint over his canvas.

Derek is reminded of an arterial spray of blood. It takes him a second to realize that’s exactly what Stiles is replicating.

“Ha!” Stiles flicks the brush again, and red paint splatters across the woman’s pale face.

“Stiles.” Derek can taste the sour scent of rising panic in him. Can hear the too-rapid beating of his heart, and the rasp of his breath. “Don’t. You’re wrecking it.”

Peter is out of the hammock and kneeling beside them before Derek even realizes he’s moved. “He’s not wrecking anything. He can express himself however he likes.”

Derek narrows his eyes at his uncle, because he knows Peter can tell Stiles is on the verge of another panic attack too, and whatever the fuck he’s doing with the painting, with the memory of his mother, isn’t helping.

“Stiles, remember how to breathe,” Derek tells him. He puts his hand over Stiles’s diaphragm. “Breathe in for me, okay.”

They’ve been practicing this. Stiles pushes his shoulders back and draws a deep breath. Derek feels his chest expand under his hand. Then Stiles lets the breath out slowly.

“Again,” Derek says.

This time the breath is shakier, but at least it’s pulling some oxygen into his body.

“Again.”

After several more breaths, Stiles’s heartbeat returns to normal. He picks up his paintbrush from where he dropped it, and dunks it in the jar of water to clean the dirt off it. Then he stares at the painting. The woman’s pale face is splattered with red.

“My mom is dead,” he says.

Derek rubs a hand down his back. "I’m sorry.”

“A wolf killed her,” Stiles says. “Not an animal wolf. A wolf like you.”

Derek freezes in shock.

Stiles curls his fingers into the shape of claws, and scrapes them abruptly across the canvas, digging furrows through the paint at the woman’s throat. “Mom.”

Peter reaches out and clasps Stiles’s wrist gently, and wipes his fingers on the grass.

Derek meets his gaze.

They don’t say anything.

What is there to say?

 

***

 

For the rest of the afternoon Stiles sinks deeply into silence. Derek cleans him up and puts him in front of the television, with a blanket over him and a plate of cookies within easy reach. Stiles doesn’t eat them. He curls up into a ball and pulls the blanket over his head.

Peter stores the painting in the attic.

“You still think art therapy is a good idea?” Derek snaps at him.

Peter looks at him curiously. “I do, actually. This is the first time he’s ever spoken about what happened to him. It’s a huge step.”

Derek knows Peter’s right, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to punch something. Something Peter-shaped. “You’re not a psychologist. Stop acting like you know what’s best for him!”

“And stop acting like you don’t,” Peter says, his voice calm. “You’re not that obtuse. Do you even know what happened today? He used the painting to talk about his mother. He founds the _words_ , Derek, and he didn’t even have a panic attack while he told us. So pardon me for thinking that, yes, the art therapy is a good idea.”

Derek goes downstairs again and sits next to Stiles on the couch. Within a few minutes Stiles is lying with his head in Derek’s lap, the blanket still pulled over his face. It reminds Derek of when Stiles was new to the pack, when he was a frightened kit. He slips his hand under the blanket so he can stroke Stiles’s hair.

Hours pass.

The kids come home from school. Matty races into the living room, eager to watch TV, and takes one look at Derek and Stiles and backs out again without saying anything. Alex brings Derek a mug of tea and sets it down, before heading upstairs to do his homework. Cora and Malia are fighting over something that happened at school. It starts with yelling, and ends with doors slamming then silence. All the while, Derek strokes Stiles’s hair.

The adults arrive home in dribs and drabs. Derek listens to the snippets of their conversations that he can hear. Talk about work and colleagues and difficult customers. The usual stuff.

The afternoon softens into evening. Shadows lengthen and grow, and the living room slowly darkens. The pack begins to congregate in the kitchen. Derek hears the familiar banging and clattering of cupboard doors and pots and pans as dinner is prepared.

Stiles doesn’t move.

The sounds of laughter and low conversation drift to them from the dining room.

It’s Sarah who pads quietly up to the couch. “Aunt Talia said your dinner is in the oven, when you want it.”

“Thanks, Sarah.”

Sarah looks at Derek solemnly, then pats Stiles on the flank gently before she leaves again.

It’s another few hours before Stiles finally pulls the blanket down and peers up at Derek, blinking. “I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” Derek says.

They eat at the kitchen table.

“My dad said that he would miss me,” Stiles says suddenly. He’s not meeting Derek’s gaze. He’s looking at some point over his shoulder. “I didn’t want him to go. I followed him. Wasn’t…wasn’t supposed to leave the camp.”

Derek doesn’t say anything. He’s afraid that if he does, Stiles will stop talking, or have another panic attack.

“Mom… Mom came looking for me.” Tears well in his eyes. When he blinks, they slide down his cheeks. “She—she found me, but on the way home there was a wolf.” He draws his trembling fingers across his throat. “I ran away.”

“How old were you?”

Stiles frowns for a moment. “Nine? I think nine. I had a cake with candles on it.”

“Was it after you ran away that you found the foxes?”

Stiles nods. “I tried to go home, Derek, but I got lost. I got _lost_.”

God. If Deaton’s right and Stiles is around sixteen, it means he spent seven years with the foxes. Almost half his life. Almost long enough to forget that he’d had any sort of life at all before them.

Derek gets up from his chair and kneels on the floor beside Stiles. Stiles leans into his embrace.

“It’s not your fault,” Derek tells him. “You were just a little kid.”

Stiles shivers against him for a while. “The last thing my dad said was that he would miss me. Do you think…” His sounds hopeful and heartbroken at the same time, and afraid that the weight of both those things will crush him at any moment. “Do you think he still does?”

 

***

 

That night, Stiles sleeps in Derek’s bed again, curled up beside him, snoring and snuffling gently. Derek lies awake and watches the moonlight on his ceiling. Strange. He’d always thought Stiles had been abandoned, or orphaned, or magically sprung from nowhere, or something. Whenever he’d thought about where Stiles came from, or _who_ he came from, it had never once occurred to Derek that there might still be someone out there missing him. Maybe even someone still looking for him.

For the first time since he brought Stiles home, Derek wonders if he really belongs here at all.


	13. Chapter 13

At the end of the break, Peter heads back to Stanford, promising to come home when he can at weekends bearing stolen art supplies for Stiles. Stiles laughs and hugs him beside the car.

“Should you do that?” Matty asks, with all the righteous indignation only a twelve-year-old can summon. “Should you really just take stuff?”

Talia sighs. “With your Uncle Peter, it’s not a matter of what he should do, but what he _can_ do.”

“Peter is a moral relativist,” Stiles announces suddenly.

Derek gapes. He’s not the only one.

“Taught him a new word!” Peter grins proudly, then hugs Malia and leaves.

Later, Derek sends him a text: _You’re a moral BANKRUPT_.

He wishes he’d thought of it while Peter was still there.

 

***

 

Stiles and Derek settle into a routine. Derek goes to work as an intern three days a week at William’s architecture firm, but every Monday and Friday he and Stiles work together. Stiles paints and draws, and sometimes talks more about the things he remembers from his past, and Derek researches foxes, and cross-references what he learns with maps of northern California.

“Do you think my dad is looking for me?” Stiles asks again one day. He’s drawing a fox.

“I’m sure he is,” Derek says.

Stiles peers at the map pinned up on Derek’s bedroom wall and nods solemnly.

Derek hasn’t spelled it out for Stiles, but Stiles isn’t dumb. He knows Derek is trying to figure out where he came from. Derek is afraid he’ll get his hopes up, or afraid that Stiles will feel like he’s trying to get rid of him, but Stiles seems to understand what it’s really about: Derek wants Stiles to be happy.

It becomes a puzzle the entire pack gets invested in.

“Okay,” James says one evening, turning the steaks on the grill. “You said he remembers he was nine, because he had nine birthday candles on his cake? These aren’t humans living wild, Derek. These are humans living in a family, or a community. They might be hidden, and they might be forgotten, but they’ve still got the resources to put candles on their kids’ birthday cakes. Doesn’t that seem extraordinary to you?”

Derek nods, and watches as Stiles races around the yard with a squealing Jacob on his shoulders.

Clare brings over the onions. “It seems _impossible_.”

Even Matty has an opinion. “When humans died out, what happened to all the emissaries?”

“Those are just a stories,” James tells him.

“Last year you said humans were just stories,” Matty points out. “And now we have Stiles.”

“Kid’s got a point,” Clare says, ruffling Matty’s hair.

The idea that emissaries—humans with the knowledge and ability to practice magic—could actually exist sends Derek on a very weird research tangent. While the idea that a community of humans could hide themselves using magic is intriguing, Derek eventually dismisses it. Occam’s razor. It’s far more likely that, due to the sheer square miles of rough terrain and wilderness out there, that that’s how they’ve escaped detection. After all, nobody’s looking for them since they’re supposed to be extinct.

One morning, Stiles draws Derek a map of what he calls the camp. He thinks he probably did it wrong, and there are things he doesn’t remember, and things he gets mixed up, but Derek is amazed at the finished product nonetheless. There are at least twelve buildings, and Stiles goes through them with him.

“And this one is my house, and a man lived here but I don’t remember his name, and this house here, this is where Scott lived.”

“Scott?” Derek asks.

“Scott is my best friend,” Stiles says with a grin, and then his smile fades. “ _Was_. He was my best friend.”

Derek tries to tease him out of his darkening mood. “Oh, yeah? And who’s your best friend now?”

“Alex,” Stiles says, his eyes dancing.

Derek holds him down and tickles him until he relents.

“No! Nooooo!”

“Who’s your best friend?” Derek demands.

“It’s…it’s Peter!” Stiles squeals as Derek tickles him again. “No, it’s you! It’s you! Stop tickling me, it’s you!”

They both lay on the floor gasping for breath, snorting with laughter.

 

***

 

It’s Alex who decides that Stiles needs a birthday. Derek thinks it was probably the mention of Stiles’s last birthday that put the idea in his head. He announces it one Saturday over lunch, just like that: “Stiles needs a birthday!”

Derek looks at him.

“He’s been here almost six months,” Alex says. “So it’s like fifty-fifty that he’s due one anyway. Besides, he missed a heap, didn’t you, Stiles?”

Derek is worried that Stiles might have negative associations with the idea of a birthday. He needn’t be.

“Can I?” Stiles asks Talia. “Can I have a birthday?”

“Of course you can,” Talia says, and just like that it’s decided.

Planning it, however, is much trickier.

Stiles insists on having his birthday on a weekend that Peter is home. Peter’s at a conference in San Diego this weekend, which Stiles isn’t happy about at all. He has a bunch of new paintings to show off, and nobody else in the pack knows which famous artists’ works to compare them to. Art appreciation with the rest of the pack extends as far as _that’s a nice one_ , or _I like the yellow_ , or _what kind of animal is that?_ Nobody can wax lyrical as creatively as Peter, or for as long, and puff up Stiles’s ego in quite the same way.

Stiles wants a big cake for his birthday, and spends hours going through Amy’s recipes. He finally settles on what Derek thinks is a wedding cake, but Amy assures Stiles would be perfect. It’s a three tier chocolate cake, and Amy will do each tier with a different color frosting: yellow, pink, and blue.

The twins help Stiles make invitations, and Stiles delivers them at the dinner table one evening. He’s almost electric with excitement, and Derek loves seeing him so happy, while at the same time it strikes him as a little sad that the only people Stiles knows are sitting right here at the table. Except Peter. Peter has been emailed an invitation.

Alex and Matty are put in charge of the party games. Stiles was nine when he had his last birthday, and that appears to be the standard by which he judges parties. So there will be a pass-the-parcel, and there will be musical chairs.

Cora is put in charge of snacks.

Malia is put in charge of decorations. 

Derek, thankfully, isn’t put in charge of anything. Party planning isn’t exactly his thing.

The morning of his birthday party, Stiles wakes up with so much excess energy that Derek takes him for a run around the Preserve. Even when he’s gasping for breath, Stiles can’t stop talking about how awesome his party will be, and speculating on what presents he’s going to get.

Derek just grins at him when he mentions presents for about the hundredth time, and Stiles stoops down to pick up a pinecone and throws it at his head. It misses by a mile. “Just tell me, Der! Tell me what you got me!” Then his face falls. “You did get me a present, didn’t you?”

Derek picks up the pinecone and throws it back at him. “Of course I did! What sort of a person do you think I am?”

“A mean one!” Stiles groans as Derek leads them up a track that rises on a sharp incline. “Noooo! Don’t make me run up there! It’s my _birthday_!” He flops down onto the track, wrapping his fingers around a tree root. “Noooo! Stop torturing me!”

Derek stands above him, hands on hips, and laughs. “Idiot.”

Stiles rolls over onto his back and grins up at him. His eyes are almost as wide as his grin. “It’s my birthday, so you have to be nice to me.”

Derek eases himself down on the ground beside him, and cocks an eyebrows. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how birthdays work.”

“It is,” Stiles tells him. “Otherwise I’ll tell Mom you were mean to me, and you’ll get in trouble.”

“She’d never believe it,” Derek says smugly.

Stiles huffs, then lies quietly for a while, his breathing slowly evening out.

Derek lies back too, his arms folded behind his head, and stares up at the flashes of brilliant blue sky visible in the breaks in the canopy of trees above them.

“I don’t really need a present from you,” Stiles says at last, his voice quiet. “I was just teasing.”

“I know.” Derek also knows there’s no way he wouldn’t have got Stiles anything for his birthday, as arbitrary as it is. The chances that today is actually Stiles’s birthday are miniscule—well, one in 365, Derek supposes—and he’s not even sure if they decided on sixteen candles or seventeen, but it doesn’t matter. Today is Stiles’s day. Whenever the hell he was born, and wherever it happened, it deserves to be commemorated, because the world with Stiles in it—Derek’s life with Stiles in it—is worth celebrating.

“Because,” Stiles continues, leaning up on one elbow, “you’re already the best thing.” His tone is surprisingly solemn. “The best thing.”

Derek’s heart skips as beat and his chest squeezes as Stiles leans over him. He’s feels a sudden rush of panic, of confusion, because what he thinks is happening, and what he wants to be happening, cannot be the same thing. Then Stiles’s mouth is against his, his breath hot, his heart hammering, and he’s smearing his lips against Derek’s. He’s unpracticed. He’s clearly got no idea how to do this. He’s acting on nothing but adrenaline and instinct and want.

Derek should push him away.

He doesn’t.

He curls his fingers into Stiles’s hair, and guides the kiss. Gentles it. Slows the pace, and coaxes Stiles to do the same. Then he deepens the kiss, sliding his tongue along Stiles’s lower lip and into the hot warmth of his mouth.

Stiles tastes sweet, like sugar. Like the Froot Loops he shoveled in for breakfast, and like mango juice, and, underneath all that, like Stiles. His own unique scent, his human scent, something Derek had never known existed before Stiles came into his life.

When they break the kiss, Stiles is wide-eyed. His heart is jack hammering.

“Breathe,” Derek tells him.

“Okay,” Stiles whispers, and flops back down onto the ground. “Okay. Still breathing.”

They lie there until Derek hears the familiar sound of Peter’s car turning off the main road and heading into the Preserve.

 

***

 

The party is a great success. There’s more cake and food than even Stiles could wish for, and the living room is so full of streamers and balloons that they almost lose Jacob at one point. Stiles has so many presents that it takes him two trips to take everything up to his room when the party’s done. Then he comes back downstairs again and asks if it’s time for lunch yet.

James groans from where he’s collapsed on the couch, and undone the top button of his jeans. “Is the boy _hollow_?”

Talia gives Stiles a quick hug. “He’s a growing boy, dear.”

“He’s a machine,” James mutters.

Peter bought Stiles a book on Expressionism, and he and Stiles take it upstairs to Peter’s room to read through it. Stiles is delighted with the book, but he’s more delighted with the present Derek found for him. It’s a leather bracelet, with a triskele stamped into it. The Hale pack symbol. Also, because Derek couldn’t help himself when he saw it in the gift shop in Beacon Hills last week, he got Stiles a little porcelain fox figurine to sit on his dresser with his other treasures.

Stiles laughed when he unwrapped it, and asked if Derek was sure Wolfie wouldn’t get territorial.

Wolves, Derek reminded him with a grin, were sometimes quite fond of foxes.

Derek cleans up the living room, while James not-so-helpfully directs from the couch.

“Is that cake on the walls? Who got cake on the walls?”

“Probably Jacob,” Derek tells him, although it’s not unimaginable that Stiles, with all his excited flailing, is the true culprit. Jacob makes a good fall guy though, since he’s too small to defend himself against spurious accusations.

“Stiles had better not be serious about wanting lunch,” James says.

“I’m sure Peter will distract him for a few hours.” Derek shoves a wad of streamers into a trash bag. He’s put aside some of the streamers and balloons for Stiles to keep, if he wants. They’ll look good in his room with his brightly colored walls.

“Peter is…” James shakes his head. “Peter is actually good for him, I’ll admit.”

“Surprising, right?” Derek asks with a smile.

“A little,” James agrees. “But it’s nice to be surprised once in a while.” He eases himself into a sitting position. “You surprise me too, Derek.”

“I do?” Derek raises his brows.

“When your mother decided to let you be the one to look after Stiles, when he first arrived, I was against it.”

Derek frowns slightly, and sets the trash bag down. “Why?”

“Maybe because I thought it was too much responsibility for anyone,” James says, and shrugs. “Or maybe it’s because I could see the whole thing coming.”

Derek’s stomach clenches. “What thing?”

James sighs. “This thing between you and Stiles. Even from the start, he only had eyes for you, son.”

Derek stills. “I don’t… I don’t know what to say to that. I didn’t mean for anything to happen.”

“So something has happened.” It’s not a question.

Derek still hasn’t figured out how he feels about the kiss. He’s not ready to try and explain it to anyone else. “Kind of.”

“He’s a good kid,” James says quietly. “And so are you. I know you love him, but he’s not ready to be claimed.”

“Dad! Jesus!” Heat rises in Derek’s face. “We just kissed, okay, _once_. I’m not going to claim him!” Inside, his wolf rumbles in displeasure, clawing close to the surface and making its presence felt. _Want_ , it tells Derek. _Want. Need. Mine. Stiles._

“He’s a good kid,” James repeats. “But he’s still naïve. He doesn’t realize it yet, but he will, one day. This house is his cage, Derek. What sort of life can we really give him, if he can’t ever leave these four walls?”

“I know,” Derek rasps.

Stiles will never have a normal life. He’s a _human_. If he’s discovered, he won’t be allowed to stay with the pack. He’ll be taken away. Questioned and studied, all in the name of science. Derek thinks back to the pictures he’s seen of the man the world thought was the last human. The man who died in captivity in New York. Sitting there in his spartan room, staring blankly at the camera. Not mistreated, not hurt, but so fucking _alone_.

If there are other humans alive, if Stiles has _family_ out there still, it’s not fair to keep him here. James is right. Stiles hasn’t realized he’s in a cage, but he will. He’s whip smart. Of course he will.

It doesn’t matter what Derek wants.

If there’s anyone out there waiting Stiles, Derek needs to find them.  

If there’s even a chance…

Stiles needs to go home.  


	14. Chapter 14

Stiles is painting a portrait of his parents on his wall. This is going to be a happy painting, he assured Derek when he started, but Stiles is wearing the same serious expression he always does when he’s thinking of his past. He sets his paintbrush aside and sighs. “Derek? What if I don’t _want_ to go back?”

Derek sets his book aside. “Don’t you?”

Stiles frowns. “I want my dad.” He studies the face he’s painted. A man with light hair and lines around his eyes. “But I want my pack too.”

Derek’s heart clenches. “Stiles, I… I don’t know if you can have both.”

“I know that.” Stiles stands up and crosses to the bed. “Sometimes I think it would be okay if we never find the camp, if we never find D-Dad—”

His sudden tears show the lie as easily as his skipping heartbeat.

Derek pulls him down into a hug. “We’re going to try, though, because it’s the right thing to do, yeah?”

“Mmm.” Stiles nods against his shoulder. “I know. Because maybe he’s been looking for a long time, and he’ll be sad, and I don’t want my dad to be sad!”

“I don’t want him to be sad either,” Derek says, ignoring the part of him that selfishly demands Stiles stay, stay forever, and never leave, and what about _Derek’s_ happiness?

“If we find him, if we find _people_ …” Stiles tightens his grip on Derek. “I don’t want to leave the pack, Derek.”

“Stiles.” Derek breathes in his scent. “We’re going to try to find your dad, but it’s a long shot. Such a fucking long shot. You know that, right? And nobody is going to make you leave the pack, okay? Nobody.”

“Okay.” Stiles digs his fingers into Derek’s back tightly for a second, and then leans back. His eyes are bright with tears. “Derek, will Mom bite me?”

“What?” For a second Derek is so shocked he can’t even think.

“If we don’t find my dad, I want Mom to bite me.” Stiles swallows. “That’s how they used to turn humans into wolves. It’s in Matty’s science book.”

“Stiles…” Derek blinks. “I don’t even know if that’s possible.”

“It is! The book said!”

“But nobody’s been bitten in generations.”

“Because there was nobody to _get_ bitten,” Stiles counters. “Mom is an alpha. She could do it.”

“I don’t think she knows how!”

“I want to ask her,” Stiles says. “I want to be like you. If I was like you, I could go into town, couldn’t I? I could go to school with Cora and Malia. I could do things.”

He’s already figured out a way out of his cage, before Derek even realized he knew he was in one. “Stiles, I don’t know. It’s dangerous, I think. I’m sure I read somewhere it’s dangerous.”

“I want to ask her,” Stiles says.

“You… you can ask, but I don’t know what she’ll say.”

Stiles nods. “Okay.”

It’s a long time before he leaves Derek’s embrace and goes back to his painting.

 

 

***

 

Stiles might have changed a lot in the past six months, but he is never actually going to like Alan Deaton. There are too many negative associations from the early days, Derek supposes, and he suspects a part of Stiles will always remember how damn good it felt to bite the vet.

These days, when he visits, Deaton puts Stiles on the scales, takes his temperature—humans run a little cooler than wolves, it turns out—takes his blood pressure, and asks how he’s doing.

“Good.” Stiles often reverts to monosyllabism around Deaton.

Derek is watching from the kitchen table. At least Stiles doesn’t need to be bribed with cookies and treats every time now, but Deaton still brings him something from town. Today it’s a bag of potato chips. 

When he’s given them, Stiles mutters his thanks, and vanishes out the back door.

Deaton watches where he goes. “Hmm. A fox in the hen house?”

“He likes to collect the eggs,” Derek says with a smile.

Deaton makes a few notes, then puts his notebook away and snaps his bag closed. “He’s doing very well.”

“I wanted to ask about diseases,” Derek says.

Wolves have a more or less bulletproof immune system. Humans, Derek knows, don’t.

“Has he been sick at all?”

“No, but he could get sick, couldn’t he? Like a cold, or the flu?” Only yesterday Stiles had sneezed, and Derek had frozen in panic before realizing the sneeze was probably a result of the fact that Stiles was baking with Amy, and had managed to get a face full of flour.

Deaton considers it for a moment. “I would be very surprised. Viruses and diseases need a host to stay alive. I would imagine that when humans all but died out, their diseases died out with them. He’s probably safer here from illness than he would be in any remaining colony of humans.” 

Derek hates the way his brain seizes on that as another reason Stiles should stay. “Oh.”

He looks up as his mother appears in the doorway. “Can I speak to you, Alan?”

Deaton inclines his head.

Derek starts to get up, but Talia waves him back down. “No, I want you to hear this.” She enters the kitchen and leans against the counter. “This morning, Stiles asked me if it was possible to give him the bite.”

Deaton raises his eyebrows. “The _bite_? Where did he learn about that?” 

“He’s a smart kid,” Talia says. “ _Too_ smart.”

Deaton regards her with a slight smile. “Well, he’s right. It is possible. In theory.”

“I wouldn’t even know how to do it,” Talia sighs. “If I was even sure I wanted to!”

“Your instinct would guide you,” Deaton tells her.

Deaton is the Hale pack emissary. It’s a position that in earlier generations would have been held by a human, a human with supposed magical abilities. Nowadays, the position of emissary is more of a political one. Deaton is an ambassador for the Hale pack. While he has some arcane knowledge, Derek is fairly sure it’s all theoretical. Emissaries who can work magic are the stuff of legends. Maybe they never even existed. Or maybe Matty was right. Maybe some humans with magical abilities are still out there, hiding their communities from the wolves.

“He only wants the bite if he’s sure we can’t find his dad,” Derek says quietly. “He wants to stay with us, but he doesn’t want to be shut up it the house forever.”

Deaton sighs. “I’ll have to do some research. In some cases, if I remember, the bite didn’t take and was fatal.”

“Fatal!” Derek exclaims.

Deaton nods. “I’m not sure why. I’m not sure if they even knew at the time. I’ll look into it. But he’s young and strong, and I would think his chances of turning would be healthy.”

“We can’t risk him,” Derek says. “Not if there’s a chance it would kill him. Mom?”

Talia’s expression is somber. “I agree, Derek, but it’s not my choice. If and when he decides we can’t find his father, and if and when he decides he wants the bite, I’m not sure if I can refuse him.”

“Even if it could _kill_ him?”

Talia draws a deep breath. “He’s a smart boy, Derek. If he understands the risks and he still wants it, then yes, if the time comes, I’ll do what he asks.”

“I can’t believe you’d—” Derek is cut off from the sound of an obnoxious ringtone blasting from the counter. It’s Alex’s phone, he thinks. He stands up and snatches it up—there’s a string of numbers on the screen, but no name—and yells for his brother. “Alex!”

There’s no answer.

Talia catches his gaze. “We’ll talk about this later, Der. We’ve got months, maybe years, to talk about this.”

Derek wishes that was some consolation.

Meanwhile, Alex’s phone is still ringing. Derek stalks out onto the back porch to answer it, swiping his thumb across the screen. “Hello?”

Down in the chicken coop, Stiles has a chicken balanced on his shoulder. He looks like a hillbilly version of a pirate with a parrot.

“Um… Alex?”

“This is his brother, Derek. Who’s this?”

“Oh, um. Um, hi?” The voice is so nervous that everything ends on an upward inflection like a question. “This is Jason? I go to school with Alex? Is he there?”

 

 

***

 

Alex has a date with Jason. He’s nervous. Derek is going to drive him to the cinema, like he promised, and sit three rows in front, and keep his eyes fixed very firmly on the screen. If they ever manage to leave the house, that is. Alex is freaking out about what to wear. He’s on his third shirt change, and they should have already left.

“Alex,” Derek says, picking up the three discarded shirts. “Jason’s not going to care what you wear. And if he does, I’ll punch him.”

Stiles, rustling through Alex’s closet, snorts.

Alex is too stressed to even crack a smile. “I want to wear something _nice_ , Derek, but not something too girly! Because what if someone laughs, and then Jason’s going to have to like say something, or pretend he didn’t hear it, and it’ll be all weird and awkward!”

Stiles appears holding out a purple shirt.

“No! That one’s horrible!”

Stiles vanishes again.

“Alex, you need to take a breath,” Derek tells him. “Just pick a shirt, or I’ll pick one for you.”

Stiles holds out a light blue shirt.

Alex makes a face, but pulls it on. “Is it too girly?”

There are flowers embroidered along the hem.

“It’s fine,” Derek says.

“It’s pretty!” Stiles adds from the closet.

“I don’t want it to be pretty!”

Stiles reappears, frowning. “Why not? He likes you because _you’re_ pretty.”

“Shut up,” Alex says, and smoothes the shirt down. He’s blushing.

“ _You_ shut up,” Stiles counters. Then he grins. “You’re not pretty when you frown.”

“Oh my god,” Alex mutters. “Stop it!”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Can we get this show on the road?”

 

***

 

On the fifteen minute drive into Beacon Hills, Alex demands Derek turn around three times. Derek ignores him. When they pull up in front of Jason’s house, Jason is waiting on his porch. He’s a sandy-haired kid with a nervous smile. Derek is isn’t sure if that’s because he’s going on a date with Alex, or because Alex is bringing his scary big brother as a chaperone.

Good.

He’d better keep his hands to himself.

Derek slips Alex a twenty when they get out of the car at the cinema.

“So, um, what one do you want to see?” Alex asks when they get inside. There are two movies about to start. One is the latest episode in a blow-em-up franchise, probably a car chase every minute. The other one is a teen romance, and Derek knows Alex has been bursting to see it for weeks. Still, he can’t help but hope Jason picks the first option.

“I don’t mind,” Jason says.

“Um,” says Alex, not quite meeting his gaze. “I think that maybe this one is kind of dumb and mushy.”

“Oh,” Jason says. “It looks kind of okay.”

“Oh.” Alex chews his bottom lip for a moment. “Does it?”

“Yeah.” Jason drags the toe of his trainer across the floor. “But I don’t mind. Whatever you want to see is cool.”

“Which one… which one do you want to see though?”

Jesus. They’re so ridiculously cute and shy that Derek wants to bang their heads together. He tries his hardest not to sigh.

It takes another five minutes for them both to agree on the fluffy romance, while both somehow still managing to deny that they have any particular interest in it. Derek is grudgingly impressed when Jason buys Alex his ticket and snacks, and almost laughs when he hears the kid’s anxious whisper: “But I don’t have enough money for your brother!”

Derek pointedly takes his wallet out, and Jason sags with relief.

The movie is two hours of his life that Derek won’t get back. Looking around the cinema, full of either teenage couples or clusters of teenage girls, he figures he’s definitely not the target audience. Still, he tries to lose himself in the plot, and remember his promise not to turn around and check on Alex. Not even when he hears a slurping noise that he’s pretty sure is _not_ one of the boys taking a drink.

He wishes he could take Stiles to a movie one day. Or to a restaurant, or even to the mall. It’s not fair that Stiles is only living half a life out in the Preserve. However surrounded he is by pack, and by love, he deserves more than that.

 _If he was a wolf he could come to the movies with you_ , a voice in Derek’s head whispers.

 _If he was dead he couldn’t_ , another one counters.

When the movie finally ends, Alex comes outside with a brilliant smile on his face, his fingers tentatively entwined with Jason’s. Derek doesn’t comment on that, but he does wonder why Alex trips off to buy more popcorn and candy before they leave.

Derek parks a few houses down from Jason’s place, and looks pointedly at his watch when Alex gets out to walk Jason to his door. When he comes back, four and a half very long minutes later, he’s bright red and wearing a dopey smile.

“He likes me,” he announces, clipping on his seatbelt.

“Of course he does,” Derek says, smiling. “He’d be an idiot if he didn’t.”

When they get home, Alex practically floats inside.

Their mom and dad are waiting for them, and pretending not to be. They’re doing a terrible job of looking casual and just happening to be near the front door.

“Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!” Alex thumps straight past them toward the kitchen, clutching his popcorn and candy.

“How’d it go?” James asks.

“They were so sweet it was disgusting,” Derek says with a smile, and then shrugs. “Jason seems like a good kid. He paid for Alex’s ticket, like a gentleman. There may have even been a goodnight kiss at his front door. I made sure I wasn’t watching.”

Talia squeezes James’s hand. “I’m so glad.”

James nods and sighs, and Derek sees for the first time how worried his parents were. They just want Alex to have a chance at the same things everyone else does. They just want him to be happy.

“Where’s Stiles?” he asks, pocketing his car keys.

James smiles. “Out the back, waiting for you.”

“For me?” Derek frowns, and heads through to the kitchen. It’s empty. Then he sees that the porch light is on. He opens the door and steps outside.

The old couch from his dad’s workshop has been dragged out into the yard. There’s a large white sheet taped up to the side of the chicken coop. There’s an extension cord running from the back porch all the way down to the couch, and a laptop and a projector sitting on a kitchen chair beside the couch. Laura is fiddling with the laptop, and slapping Stiles’s hands away.

One thing he’s never outgrown is his compulsion to hit buttons just to see what happens.

Alex is watching, clutching the popcorn and candy.

“What’s going on?” Derek asks as he steps down from the porch.

Stiles turns, grinning. “We’re going to the movies!” He turns to Laura. “Is it ready yet?”

“Yes,” she says. “Now sit down and shut up!”

Stiles grabs Derek by the hands and tugs him toward the couch. “Derek, come on!”

Derek sits, surprised, and Alex shoves the popcorn and candy at him. Then Laura starts the movie, and the chicken coop is transformed into a screen.

It’s not perfect. The sound is a little weak, despite the speakers, and sometimes the rustling of the wind in the trees is louder than the dialog in the movie, but… well, no, it’s perfect. The pack leaves them alone, and Stiles leans up against him and they share popcorn and candy.

Derek doesn’t want to lose Stiles. Not ever. Not in any way.

Stiles is perfect.

It’s definitely Derek’s favorite movie of the night, even if he doesn’t remember a thing about the plot. In fact, it’s hardly five minutes in before Stiles whispers, “Laura said people kiss when they watch movies in cinemas.”

“Did she?” Derek puts his arm around Stiles’s shoulders. No awkward yawn-and-stretch maneuver required.

Stiles smile is brilliant in the moonlight. “We should do it.”

Derek doesn’t argue.

This time, Stiles tastes like candy and popcorn.


	15. Chapter 15

Foxes are territorial animals. They don’t migrate. Their territory, in the wilderness, can be tens of square miles. In urban areas it might only be a few blocks wide. It’s unusual for them to leave their territory, but the winter Derek and Cora found Stiles had been a hard one.

Stiles finds it difficult to articulate what he remembers when it comes to the foxes. He sits on Derek’s bed one night, Derek’s comforter pulled loosely around him. He’s brought his little porcelain fox with him, and is balancing it on the flat palm of his hand. He has it raised to his eye level, and is looking at it with his head on an angle.

“Hungry,” he says at last. “Came further because we were hungry.”

Derek is sitting on the floor. He sets his book aside. “Did you have names for the foxes?”

“Mmm.” Stiles tilts his palm a little, and closes his fingers over his fox to catch it before it falls. “Kind of? Sounds for them. But words are just sounds too, aren’t they?”

“I guess so.” Derek smiles at that, and leans his head back against the wall. “Do you remember your name, Stiles? Do you remember what your parents called you?”

“I don’t know.” He wrinkles his nose, and the corner of his mouth quirks up. “Just sounds.” Then he hunches over a little.

Derek knows better than to push when Stiles gets anxious.

He studies the map on the wall. The Preserve, and the Hale Pack territory, is actually on the southern edge of the Mendocino National Forest. It would make sense that the foxes came across Stiles somewhere close to the Hale Pack territory—but far enough out of it that none of the Hales ever caught his scent—but it seems almost impossible to narrow down where Stiles had been before that, or how long, and how far, he’d wandered alone after his mother was killed. There are over 900 000 acres of mountains, canyons, and wilderness in the Mendocino National Forest. It's a miracle Stiles even survived. 

Stiles opens and closes his palm for a while, making his little fox appear and disappear. Then he extends his arm and sets the fox gently on Derek’s bedside table, on top of a stack of books. The light from the lamp shines on the underside of his pale wrist, illuminating the fine veins under his skin, and for a moment he looks so fragile that Derek’s throat aches and his eyes sting as he thinks of that terrified little boy, lost in the woods.

“Der.” Stiles’s eyes shine in the lamplight. He twists his leather bracelet around his wrist, and presses his thumb over the Hale triskele. “I am pack, aren’t I?”

“Of course you are.” Derek shakes his head slightly. “Jesus, Stiles, don’t even ask that question, okay? You are as much a part of this pack as anyone.”

“Good.” Stiles nods slowly. “Sometimes it’s scary because I’m not sure what I am.”

“You shouldn’t be scared of that, Stiles,” Derek says. “Even if you don’t always know, we do. You’ll always have a place in this pack, whatever happens.”

Stiles shoves Derek’s comforter off and scrambles down onto the floor. Before Derek has a chance to move, Stiles has straddled him. His knees hit the floor either side of Derek’s thighs, and he curls his hands over Derek’s shoulders. His eyes are shining. “What’s my place?”

“Hmm.” Derek reaches out and cups his cheek. “You’re the only one Alex trusts to pick nail colors. You’re the first person Amy checks with nowadays when she needs to test a new recipe.” He loves the way Stiles smiles. “You can stop Jacob screaming faster than Laura or Mark can. The kids worship you. _Nobody_ can deal with Peter the way you do, and Peter doesn’t like anyone _except_ you.”

Stiles laughs at that.

“And I’m pretty sure you’re Mom’s favorite,” Derek tells him.

Stiles leans forward, and chuffs against his throat, and the sound reminds Derek of when Stiles was new. Then Stiles presses his lips to Derek’s pulse point, and his tongue flicks against his skin. “You’re my favorite.”

Derek closes his eyes and cards his fingers through Stiles’s hair as a shiver runs through him. “You’re my favorite too.”

Stiles presses against him, and their hearts beat in counterpoint.

 

***

 

Derek has never thought the Hale house was particularly isolated, but they don’t get a lot of visitors. The pack members work in town, and conduct all of their business there. When Talia meets with the extended members of the pack, or affiliates, she goes into town to do it because the house isn’t big enough. She usually books the high school auditorium.

So when Derek first hears unfamiliar footsteps approaching the house, he’s alert. A second after that, when the doorbell rings, he’s panicking.

“Stiles! Stiles!”

Stiles is in the living room.  

They have a drill.

Derek hasn’t been a part of it before, having been away at Stanford the last time someone actually visited, but he knows it all the same. So does Stiles.

Wide-eyed, he scrambles up from the couch where he’s been playing a video game with Matty, and races up the stairs to his bedroom. He slams the door shut.

Derek hopes it’s enough. Stiles’s scent is so familiar to him now that it’s easy to forget it’s unique, that it’s extraordinary, and that it’s covering almost every surface in the house. If anyone was to actually come inside…

Derek waits in the hallway near the front door. Clare sweeps through with a can of pungent air freshener that promises to smell like pine, but really only smells like chemicals. She blasts Derek with it.

It’s Talia who answers the door.

“Can I help you?”

It’s Jason. His nose twitches, and Derek hopes it’s because of the air freshener and nothing else. “H-hello, Alpha Hale. I’m Jason Cormack. Is Alex here?”

They’re just two kids dating, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t protocols to be observed. Jason, by coming here, is stating his intentions. As the pack alpha, Talia should invite Jason in to show that she approves of those intentions toward her son.

“Wait here, and I’ll get him,” Talia says. Her tone is kind, but Derek sees Jason’s face fall as she closes the door on him. “Alex?”

Alex comes downstairs. It’s close to full moon, and he’s wearing a summery dress. “What?”

“Jason’s here,” Talia says.

“Oh!” Alex flushes.

“Take him out into the Preserve,” Talia says. “Don’t invite him back here.”

“Oh.” Alex’s face falls too, before he nods. “Okay, Mom.”

Derek meets his mother’s gaze.

Alex opens the door. “Hi, Jason.”

“Hi.” Jason’s gaze darts between Talia and Alex. “You look, um, you look nice.”

“Thanks,” Alex says, his flush deepening. “Let’s go for a walk.”

The boys set off into the Preserve, Jason casting worried glances back toward the house.

“It’s not fair on him,” Talia says quietly as she closes the door again, and Derek isn’t sure who she’s referring to: Jason, or Alex, or Stiles. It doesn’t matter, he supposes. It’s not fair on any of them.

 

***

 

Jason turns up doggedly the next afternoon, and the afternoon after that. Each time, shoulders squared, he knocks on the door and each time he’s not invited inside. Each time, Alex goes out to him. On the fourth afternoon Jason doesn’t come back, and, the next day, Alex is in tears when he gets home from school.

“He th-thinks you didn’t like him!” he sobs in Talia’s arms. “He thinks he isn’t welcome here!”

Stiles is watching from the top of the stairs. When Derek meets his gaze, he wipes at his eyes furiously with the heels of his hands.

After that, nobody mentions Jason’s name in Alex’s hearing.

“It’s my fault,” Stiles whispers to Derek in the middle of the night.

“What is?”

“Jason.”

“It’s not your fault,” Derek tells him. “Alex doesn’t blame you.”

“He should.” Stiles throws the comforter off and goes back to his own room.

His paintings get darker again for a while.

He stops snuggling up in Derek’s bed at night, and sleeps alone in his room. He puts distance between Derek and himself. He no longer seeks out hugs and kisses. He gets quiet.

Derek thinks that Stiles has decided that if Alex can’t be happy with someone, then he shouldn’t be either.

Derek doesn’t really blame him.

He feels the same himself.

 

***

 

In August, Derek gets an email from Boyd. The joint design their professor submitted for the several competitions has won second place in one. There’s going to be an award presentation in Los Angeles. Boyd seems mostly excited about the free accommodation and dinner. Derek doesn’t want to go, but Talia tells him Stiles will manage for a few days without him, and William points out it will be good press for both himself and the firm.

“Just for a few days,” Derek says. “I’ll be back by the weekend.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and nods.

Derek invites Erica’s friend Isaac as his plus one, and drives down to Los Angeles. He arrives just in time for peak hour on a Tuesday afternoon, which is hellish, but he finds the hotel at last. Erica and Boyd and Isaac are already there, and already drunk. The awards dinner isn’t until Wednesday night, so apparently they’ve decided to get wasted while they’ve got the chance.

It’s a fun night.

Derek’s not worried about Stiles missing him too much, and it’s nice to catch up with his friends. They stay out drinking until dawn, then spend Wednesday sleeping and sobering up. They’re all fragile and hungover for the awards dinner itself, but manage to smile and nod and get some networking done.

“I still don’t know why you went back to Beacon Hills,” Boyd tells him in the taxi back to the hotel.

“Pack business,” Derek shrugs. “My mom’s the alpha, so, you know, it’s not like I could refuse.”

Boyd sighs. “Dude, I could really use you this semester. There is nobody else in the class as good with carbon neutral environmental designs as you! Well, apart from me.”

On Thursday morning Erica and Isaac drag them out shopping. Isaac buys a ridiculous number of scarves. Erica laments the state of her credit card debt.

Derek and Boyd trail along behind them, throwing ideas for tiny houses back and forth. Boyd thinks tiny houses are a fad. What’s the point of designing a house for a single occupant, or a couple, when a wolf wants to be surrounded by pack members? Derek agrees, but they both enjoy the challenge of taking a space the size of a shipping container, or smaller, and finding a way to make it function as a complete home. As always they find themselves coming back to sustainability, and wondering if there’s a way to build a house totally off grid, with its own power and water supply.

Derek misses college, but not enough that he regrets deferring.

After lunch, Derek says his goodbyes and drives back to Beacon Hills. It’s night when he finally makes it home. Stiles is waiting for him.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he says, and Derek folds him into an embrace.

Just like that, the distance between them vanishes.

 

***

 

Peter comes home for the weekend, and immediately sniffs out Alex’s unhappiness and, of course, Stiles’s.

“I’m not surprised,” he says when Derek joins him for a drink that night. “Alex is clearly working on developing the same martyr complex you’ve perfected. Any other teenager would be screaming and breaking things and reminding the world they didn’t ask to be born, but not Alex.”

“What? You’d prefer it if he blamed Stiles, or Mom?”

“I didn’t say I’d prefer it,” Peter says, refilling his glass. “I didn’t say that at all.”

Derek sighs.

“So, the other night I met someone,” Peter says. “Not the point of the story, but I thought I’d start there just so you know I’m still getting laid.”

Derek rolls his eyes, but the tension in his shoulders loosens.

Peter smiles. “Anyway, there I was, two o’clock in the morning, cleaning up vomit in my bathroom—don’t ask—and I started thinking about Stiles’s mother.”

Derek raises his brows. “Is there a connection with Stiles’s mom and vomit?”

“Not really. Just… sambuca shots. Just say no.”

“Then why even mention the vomit?”

“You’re the one who keeps saying it.” Peter’s smile is teasing. “Do you want to hear this, or not?”

Derek nods wearily.

“Okay, so we know that Stiles’s mom was killed by a shifter, by a wolf. Probably a feral omega. But then it got me wondering, if you were a feral omega, and you came across a human woman in the woods, what’s the one thing you _wouldn’t_ do?”

“Well, I wouldn’t kill her,” Derek muttered.

“For the purposes of this hypothetical scenario, you’re feral,” Peter reminds him. “Or just a homicidal maniac, I don’t know. That’s not the point. The point is, Derek, you just killed a _human_.”

Derek is silent for a moment as the implications of that sink in. Humans are supposed to be extinct. They’re almost mythical. Finding one would be as incredible as finding a unicorn, or the Loch Ness Monster. “I wouldn’t keep quiet about it. I’d be on the front page of every newspaper on the planet.”

“Exactly,” Peter says with a nod. “So why wasn’t he? Even someone in a feral state would retain enough awareness to know what they’d done, and, more importantly, to know the significance of it. So why didn’t whoever killed Stiles’s mother come running out of the wilderness just bursting to tell the entire world what had happened?”

“Because he never made it out,” Derek says slowly.

“Whoever these humans are, it’s safe to assume they can defend themselves, and their territory,” Peter agrees. “He killed her, and they killed him.”

For the first time Derek sees the stack of pages Peter’s got sitting beside him on the couch. Peter picks them up and dumps them on his lap.

“What’s this?”

“These are copies of the police reports for every current missing person in northern California reported between the last six and ten years,” Peter tells him. “Wolves are pack animals, Derek, and omegas are incredibly rare. It’s very unusual for them to stay missing for this length of time. Most of them are either killed for encroaching on the wrong territory, or they wind up joining another pack. Either way, the case is closed. There are only six reports here. One of these might be his mother’s killer, which means that one of these last known locations might be near where Stiles came from.”

“Jesus,” Derek looks at the stack of pages. “You’re a fucking genius.”

Peter looks smug. “I know.” Then his expression grows serious, and his hand hovers over the pages. “I could take them back, if you want.”

It takes Derek a moment to realize what Peter’s offering. He’s offering to pretend they never had this conversation. He’s offering to make the pages disappear.

“No.” Derek pushes Peter’s hand away. “I promised him I’d try.”

“You _have_ tried,” Peter says quietly.

“I don’t want him to leave, but he deserves every chance of finding his dad,” Derek says. “How would I ever look him in the eye again if I sabotaged his chances?”

“Mmm.” Peter nods slowly. “And how will you ever look yourself in the eye if you let your mate vanish into the wilderness again?”

“Stiles isn’t my…” Derek can’t finish the thought.

Because he is.

Of course he is.

Derek’s known it for a while now.

 

***

 

Stiles isn’t in Derek’s bedroom when he goes upstairs.

He’s not in his own bedroom either.

Derek tracks his scent to Alex’s door. It’s ajar. Derek pushes it open a little further.

Alex and Stiles are curled up together on the bed, arms around each other. Alex is asleep, but his cheeks are damp. Stiles is rubbing his back gently.

Derek feels an ache in his chest. He remembers when he did this for Stiles, so many times, when Stiles was lonely and afraid.

Stiles meets his gaze and smiles sadly.

Derek thinks about leaving them to it. Then, toeing off his shoes, he steps into the room. He climbs into the bed on the other side of Alex, and put an arm over both of them. Alex opens his bleary eyes and twists his head to look at him.

“It’s okay,” Derek says. “It’ll get better. You’ll be happy again.”

He’s not sure which one of them he’s talking to.


	16. Chapter 16

Derek waits until Monday morning to show Stiles what Peter found. Everyone is at school or at work. Cassie has a kindergarten day, so it’s only Talia and Jacob in the house with them. It’s as quiet as it ever gets. Stiles and Jacob are sitting at the dining room table. Stiles is drawing, hunched over his sketchpad. Peter has introduced him to charcoals recently, and it’s messy, but Stiles likes the way charcoal is easy to smooth and smudge across the pages to create shadow and depth.

Jacob is bashing his xylophone, and Stiles nods his head along to the not-quite beat.

Derek spreads the papers out on the table, and Stiles sets his charcoal aside and walks around the table to see what he’s doing.

He doesn’t flinch when he sees any of the photographs of the missing persons. Why would he? He probably only saw his mother’s killer in shifted form.

“I think this might be the man who attacked your mom,” Derek says.

Lyle Riggs. Thirty-two years old when he went missing. He’d been thrown out of his pack a few months before that, and made an omega. He was last seen in Wildwood, which put him right in the middle of the Mendocino National Forest. Local pack members had tracked him south into the woods, concerned he was trespassing on their alpha’s territory, but lost him when he’d crossed a creek several miles into the foothills. They’d let him go because he’d passed out of their territory into the National Forest. Their alpha had no jurisdiction there.

Stiles puts his finger on the corner of the page and pulls it closer. He leaves a charcoal print on the paper. He blinks down at the photograph of Lyle Riggs, and then shrugs his shoulders. “Am I supposed to be able to tell?”

From someone else the question might have sounded sarcastic. But not from Stiles, not today.

“No.” Derek puts his hand on the back of Stiles’s neck and rubs gently.

Stiles chews his bottom lip. “We don’t have to go, do we?”

“No.” Derek feels the tension Stiles is holding in him, and wishes there was some way to drain it. He keeps rubbing his neck slowly. “It’s up to you.”

Stiles is silent for a long time. Then he sighs. “My dad… my dad was the _best_ , Der. They were going to get supplies, him and some of the others, and he said he’d miss me, and I thought I was old enough to go too, and I thought he’d be so proud of me when I caught up to them. I messed it all up though, and my mom…” He closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them again, they’re bright with tears. “It’s my fault.”

“You were a kid,” Derek says. “Just a kid.”

Jacob bangs out what might be a middle C on his xylophone.

Somewhere deeper in the house, a phone rings.

A breath shudders out of Stiles. “I want to see my dad. I want to tell him that I’m sorry.”

“Then we’ll go,” Derek says. “We’ll see if we can find him.”

Stiles draws a deep breath and squares his shoulders. “Okay. We’ll try.”

Derek won’t make any promises, but he knows Stiles doesn’t expect him to. Even with a possible starting point, there’s no guarantee they’ll find Stiles’s father. There’s no guarantee Lyle Riggs was the guy who killed his mom. A part of Derek hopes they’ll head out and find nothing, but they have to try, and Derek will give it his best effort even though a part of him wants to fail. Stiles deserves his best.

“Derek?” Talia leans in the doorway. She looks tense. “I have to go into town. Are you okay watching Jacob? It’s pack business. I’d rather leave him here.”

Derek nods. He squeezes Stiles’s neck reassuringly, and then follows him mother out toward the front door.

Talia goes through her handbag looking for her keys.

“Everything okay?”

She sighs. “Ian Cormack wants to meet me.”

The name sounds familiar.

“Jason’s father.” Talia rubs her forehead for a moment, as though she’s trying to chase away a headache. “And since I’ve got no other business with the Cormacks that I can think of, then of course it’s about Jason.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

“I have no idea.” She holds her keys up at last. “We’re not a traditional pack in a lot of senses, Derek, but there are some traditions that are important. Snubbing that boy was not only an insult to him, but to his family.”

Derek nods.

The Cormacks are affiliated with the Hale pack. Everyone in town who isn’t a direct Hale pack member is still affiliated with them, and has sworn an oath to Talia as the alpha of Beacon Hills. Establishing a hierarchy with one alpha at the top is the only way for wolves to coexist peacefully in urban areas. The Cormacks have their own alpha—Ian—who  is a member of the town council, but he defers to Talia Hale. It doesn’t mean that he’ll be happy about her refusal to invite Jason into her home though. He’ll consider it an insult. Under any other circumstances, if would have been one.

“I’m picking up Deaton on the way,” Talia says. “Hopefully he’ll be able to help me talk my way out of this.”

“Good luck,” Derek says.

“I’ll need it.” She heads outside to her car.

When Derek gets back to the dining room, it’s empty. He finds Stiles and Jacob in the kitchen, taking cookies from the jar.

“It’s almost lunchtime. You’ll ruin your appetite,” he says.

Stiles and Jacob share an evil grin.

“These are white chocolate and macadamia nuts,” Stiles says winningly.

Derek takes two. He’s not made of stone.

 

***

 

Talia is gone for hours. When she gets back, Jacob is down for his nap and Stiles is feeding the chickens. Or tormenting them. Whatever. It makes him happy. Derek can hear him cackling from inside the house.

He starts making his mom a cup of tea the minute he hears her car approaching, and presses it into her hands the moment she gets inside. Then he follows her to her study.

“That…” Talia sits down behind her desk and groans. “That did not go well.”

“Will there be trouble?” Derek asks. It’s hard to know exactly how much pressure Ian Cormack can exert on the rest of the town councilors. Enough to make Talia’s job more difficult, probably.

Talia sips her tea. “No. No, Ian is a good man. I explained to him that Alex is different, and played the over-protective mom card.”

Derek winces.

“I know,” Talia says. “I hated doing it. Ever since we found out Alex’s wolf is female, I’ve told him over and over again that it’s nothing to be ashamed of, that there’s nothing wrong with him, and suddenly here I am using it as an excuse. I fucking hate myself right now.”

Derek’s not sure what shocks him the most, the admission, or the language.

Talia passes her hand in front of her eyes. “And of course he was perfectly understanding and sympathetic, and said that he realized how difficult it must be, as a parent, and all I could think was I don’t need his understanding, or his sympathy. There’s nothing wrong with Alex! And the worst part was, I could tell he thought the same thing. So now he probably thinks I’m a some sort of bigot who was hit by the karma bus because I can’t deal with the fact that my son is gender fluid.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

She waves it away. “On the upside, he’s going to go and explain to Jason that I’m not comfortable with anyone formally dating Alex. On the downside, now nobody can formally date Alex!”

Derek winces again.

“I’ve told him I’ve got no problem with them hanging out or going to the movies if that’s what they want to do, just that I’m not ready to invite Jason into the house and make it official. So he also thinks I’m a complete hypocrite.” She groans. “So no, it did not go well.”

“But he wasn’t offended?”

“He wasn’t offended that I didn’t invite his son into my house, no,” Talia says, “but I think he’s pretty offended that I’m such a horrible person.”

“I’m sorry,” Derek says again.

Talia takes a deep breath. “It’s fine, really. You’re right, it could have been much worse. This way, maybe Alex will be happy, and Stiles will be safe.”

“I want to start looking for his father,” Derek tells her. “Near Wildwood.”

Talia sits up straighter. “Wildwood? That’s Ruiz territory. You’ll need their alpha’s permission.”

“Can I get it?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve only dealt with Carlos a few times, but he’s reasonable. I think Peter’s met him too, when he was with Patricia’s pack. You should take him with you. If Carlos has already met him, he’s less likely to ask for a formal meeting when you go into his territory. You want to avoid that, given the way you smell like Stiles.”

Derek hadn’t even considered that. “Will Peter agree?”

“When it comes to Stiles, I think he will.”

Derek smiles a little at that. It’s true.

“You think Stiles comes from the Mendocino?”

“Maybe. We think that his mom was killed by a guy last seen in Wildwood. He probably went feral. The timeframe fits.”

“It’s a long shot,” Talia says.

“I know. But we need to try.”

“I don’t…” Talia shakes her head. “I don’t want to give Stiles the bite. Not just because it’s dangerous, or because I’ve never done it before. He’s _human_. I don’t want to take that away from him. If there are other humans out there, he should be with them.”

Derek’s heart sinks.

“But if he’s the last one... I don’t want to be the person responsible for the final extinction of a species, Derek. But I’ll do it, if that’s his only chance of leading a normal life.”

“And what if we find some humans, what if we find his dad, but Stiles still wants to be a part of our pack?”

“Derek.” Talia’s smile is sad. “He can’t have it both ways. He knows that, and so do you.”

Yeah. Derek knows it.

 

***

 

Later, he thinks that maybe it’s because Stiles is so afraid of leaving that it happens.

Maybe he does it because he fears he won’t get another chance.

Maybe the door’s already closing, so Stiles is grabbing what he can before it slams shut.

Derek wakes up when his mattress dips and Stiles climbs into bed beside him. Derek is still half asleep when Stiles kisses him with an urgency he hasn’t shown before, and then his cold fingers are slipping under the waistband of Derek’s sleep pants and he’s tugging them down over Derek’s hips.

“Stiles, what’re you doing?”

He’s naked. Holy shit. Stiles is naked.

“Shh!” Stiles pauses for a moment, then presses his lips against Derek’s again. “Just let me—” He shoves his hand into Derek’s underwear.

“Stiles!”

“Please, Derek. Please. Can we, please?”

There are a thousand reasons Derek should say no, but he wants this. He does, and his wolf does, and he wants to believe the universe does. Because here’s the boy he loves, in his bed, and Derek needs to be as close to him as he can possibly be. He needs there to be nothing between them but skin and whispered promises, and love.

He should say no, but he doesn’t.

“Slow down,” he says instead, and Stiles smiles at him in the darkness, and settles back onto the mattress.

Derek has seen Stiles naked more times than he can count, but this is the first time it’s meant anything. This is the first times Stiles has been in a place where he can offer himself like this, and know exactly what his nakedness means.

In the moonlight, Sitles’s body is all angles and planes. He’s slim, but no longer skinny. He’s _beautiful_ , and he’s beautifully unashamed. There’s no fear on his face, no trace of anxiety, just trust. Total trust.

Derek loves him.

He leaves a trail of kisses down his chest, feeling Stiles’s heart beat faster under the press of his mouth. He runs his hands along his sides, feeling the dips of his ribs. He brushes his fingers across his nipples, loving how they become taut under his touch, and smiles when Stiles gasps sharply at the sensation.

They kiss.

They touch.

They rock against one another.

There’s a point where it should become awkward—when Derek reaches for his lube and slicks his fingers up—but Stiles only sighs and tilts his pelvis up to allow Derek to press his fingers inside. He’s tightness and heat, and he’s beautiful. Derek could spend a lifetime in this moment.

“I’m ready,” Stiles whispers at last. “Der, I’m ready.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m ready,” Stiles whispers again.

“I love you,” Derek says, and kisses him.

“I love you too.”

Derek pushes inside. Stiles gives a broken moan, and Derek freezes.

“No.” Stiles bites his shoulder. “No, it’s good. Keep going.”

Derek eases a little further inside.

Then, a moment later, Stiles makes a face. “You’re really big!”

“Is it okay?”

Stiles’s breath is hot against his face. “Y-yeah.”

“I love you,” Derek whispers again.

“Derek,” Stiles murmurs, and hooks his legs around Derek’s thighs.

Derek wants it to last for eternity. He wants time to stop. He wants nothing more in his life than this: Stiles underneath him, opening up for him, breathing with him, murmuring his name as though it’s as holy as a prayer. He wants the world to stop turning. He wants this moment, now and always.

He wants his mate forever.

He rocks into Stiles, into a rhythm as ancient as creation, and Stiles moans and arches into every thrust. Urgent heat builds between them. Stiles’s breath rasps and he digs his fingers into Derek’s back. When he comes, he shudders and cries out, his eyes wide.

“Derek!”

Derek is only seconds behind him.

“I love you,” he whispers, kissing Stiles’s sudden tears away. “I love you.”

Stiles lays a trembling hand against the side of his face. “Love you too.”

They fall asleep in tangled sheets and tangled limbs, bodies pressed together.

 

***

 

Sunlight falls across Stiles’s pale skin, illuminating him. Derek's wolf rumbles its contentment, pleased and proud and satisfied to have Stiles in his bed like this.

Derek dresses quietly, unwilling to wake him.

He heads downstairs.

It’s early still. Nobody else is out of bed, or at least Derek thinks so until he steps into the kitchen and the coffee maker is already burbling away. Talia, wrapped in a dressing gown, is stifling a yawn as she waits for her coffee.

“Morning,” Derek says.

She’s alert at once, features sharpening warily before they soften with concern. “Oh, Derek…”

She knows. Not only must she be able to smell Stiles all over him, but she’s the alpha and his wolf is close to the surface, radiating pride. Derek has never felt more of a disconnect between himself and his wolf as today.

“Sweetheart,” Talia says with a sigh.

“I didn’t claim him,” Derek says, although his gums had itched with the need for his fangs to descend, to embed themselves in Stiles’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t.”

And he can’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“This will make it harder for him to leave, if he has to,” Talia says quietly.

Derek smiles sadly, and shakes his head. “No. No, it won’t, Mom. Because it was always going to be this hard.”

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

It takes a little time for Peter to organize some time off work to accompany them to the Mendocino.

Not enough time, really.

Derek wishes it was years.

Stiles seems excited about their upcoming trip. A trip, Talia has taken to calling it. Not a farewell. A _trip_ , which comes with the expectation of a return. It’s not like anyone’s calling it anything else though, not in front of the kids. Hell, not in front of Derek too, he guesses.

Stiles likes his new hiking boots and pack. He stomps up and down the stairs wearing both the boots and the pack, to get himself used to them.

When it comes down to it though, Stiles doesn’t know what to pack. He doesn’t know if he’ll be coming home. A part of Derek wants to laugh when he sees Stiles sneak Wolfie into his pack. A part of him wants to cry.

The night before Peter arrives home, Derek leans in the doorway of the library. Talia is sitting on the couch. Stiles is sitting on the floor, leaning his head against her knees.

“It’s not goodbye, sweetheart,” she tells him, carding her fingers through his hair. “Whatever happens, there will always be a place in the Hale pack for you, do you understand?”

“Yes, Mom,” he whispers.

“Always, baby,” she says, and leans down so that she can kiss his scruffy hair.

Later when Derek goes looking for Stiles again, he’s vanished. Derek follows his scent out into the yard, and finds him sitting in the chicken coop, staring up at the stars. He’s got a disgruntled looking chicken in his lap, one hand splayed across her back to keep her there.

“That cannot be sanitary,” Derek tells him. “You are not coming into my bed after this!”

“Don’t want to,” Stiles says. “Want you to come into mine.”

“You’re having a shower first.”

Stiles’s answering smile isn’t as bright as it should be.

When Stiles comes inside again, he trails his fingers along the walls and curls them around the doorjambs, and Derek can’t help but think this is his slow goodbye. He meets Alex on the stairs and folds his arms around him and buries his face in his neck. Scents him, just like he’s seen the wolves do.

Alex scents him back, sniffling though his tears.

“You smell like the chickens,” Alex mutters.

“You smell pretty,” Stiles whispers back.

It takes a long time for them to break apart and for Stiles to trail upstairs.

“I don’t want to go,” Stiles whispers in Derek’s ear in the middle of the night.

“I know.” Derek holds him close, and stares at his pack on the floor.

He saw Stiles slip the little porcelain fox inside earlier.

“I don’t want to go,” Stiles repeats, his tears damp against Derek’s cheek too.

“I don’t want you to go,” Derek says, but they both know he has to.

 

 

***

 

“Road trip!” Peter exclaims with false cheer. He loads their packs into the back of the SUV. “Now, Stiles, you’re going to go in the back seat, okay?”

Stiles almost crumples as Derek helps him up into the back seat and pulls the seatbelt across his body.

“We don’t need to, Stiles,” Peter says in a low tone. “We can just do a few laps of the Preserve and come straight back home.”

Stiles is holding his broken old tag in his fist: STIL. He tightens his grip on it as Peter talks, as though it’s a talisman, as though he’s borrowing strength from it when he needs it. His eyes are big, but his voice is as small as a whisper. “No, I need to see, Peter. I need to see if my dad’s still looking for me.”

“You’re a better man than me, Stiles,” Peter says with a rueful smile, and closes the door.

Derek climbs into the front passenger seat. He can’t look at the pack standing out the front of the house. He can’t bear see their uncertainty, their misery. He reaches back between the seats, and feels Stiles’s trembling fingers curl around his own.

Peter starts the car.

Stiles makes a small noise of surprise, and his grip tightens.

Derek looks back at him, glad for the distraction. “You haven’t been in a car before, have you?”

Stiles shakes his head.

“I would really appreciate it if you don’t vomit,” Peter says.

“Is that going to happen?” Stiles asks, eyes wide.

“No,” Derek says firmly. “That’s not going to happen.”

“But if you _feel_ like it’s going to happen,” Peter adds, “please do let me know, and I’ll pull over.”

The trees flash past.

Stiles twists his head to look behind them, but the Hale house has already vanished behind the curve of the road and is lost to the woods.

“Okay,” Peter says. “Stiles, there’s a blanket beside you. If Derek or I tell you, then you need to undo your seatbelt and get on the floor with the blanket over you, okay?”

“Okay,” Stiles says in a small voice.

Derek glances down at the can of air freshener shoved in the cup holder between the front seats. If they’re pulled over for any reason, he hopes it will be enough.

The car ride is the closest thing Stiles has known to freedom since he stumbled onto Hale territory all those months ago. When they turn onto the main road that leads into Beacon Hills, Stiles lets go of Derek’s hand so he can twist around and stare out the window in amazement. He taps his long fingers along the glass. 

Peter hits the child locks because, yeah, Stiles still has that whole button fixation.

Houses flash past, becoming closer and closer together, and then they’re in Beacon Hills, and there are cars and shops and businesses and the town hall and the park with the statues in it, and it _hurts_. Derek wishes he could have shown all this to Stiles before. He wishes it didn’t have to be done from inside a car, where nobody on the street can catch his scent.

Stiles is wide-eyed, drinking it all in.

“Derek,” he whispers. “Wow.”

Derek glances at Peter. He expects Peter to throw out some sarcastic remark about this being Beacon Hills, not New York, but Peter only presses his mouth into a thin line and then tightens his grip on the steering wheel.

Derek looks away again.

Neither of them says anything.

 

***

 

 

It takes several hours to get to Wildwood. Stiles is asleep when they pull up on the outskirts of town at what looks to be a park. The playground equipment is sparse and neglected. There’s a trail leading into the woods from here.

Peter calls Carlos Ruiz, the local alpha.

Derek has always admired the way that Peter can lie. Well, not lie—wolves can’t lie—but Peter can certainly evade the truth in a way that leaves whoever he’s talking to the entirely wrong impression.

He’s smiling as he talks to Ruiz, and the smile tempers his tone. His heartbeat remains totally steady as he tells the alpha that they’re close to town, and were hoping to head straight out. They’ll leave the car in Wildwood and hike south, and be out of the alpha’s territory in an hour or so.

Whatever Ruiz says in response makes Peter laugh.

When he ends the call, his smile vanishes. “Let’s go,” he says. “Before he changes his mind and decides to send a welcoming committee.”

Now, on another pack’s territory, Derek is nervous. He helps Stiles with the straps of his pack, making sure the weight is distributed evenly so that it doesn’t cause him any problems. They move toward the head of the trail, Peter casting looks behind them whenever a car passes on the road.

Derek is so focused on getting out of another alpha’s territory that he almost forgets what he might be walking into: some unknown place in the wilderness where he’ll have to say goodbye to Stiles, his mate. His wolf oscillates between pushing Stiles to move more quickly, to protect him from discovery by the Ruiz pack, and wanting to drag him back to the car, and away from whatever is waiting for them out there.

They cross out of Ruiz territory in a little under two hours. Peter doesn’t let them stop hiking for at least another hour after that and he only stops them at last, Derek thinks, because he can see Stiles limping.

They move off the track, up an incline, and further into the foothills. The air smells of pine. A breeze chills the sweat on Derek’s skin. The day is warm, but not too hot. It’s perfect hiking weather; another reason they didn’t want to delay this trip any longer.

Derek helps Stiles take off his pack, and then eases his boots off. Stiles winces. His thick socks stick to the back of his heels as Derek carefully peels them off. He’s already formed blisters, and already rubbed them raw. Stiles hasn’t worn his boots for long enough periods before to break them in, and he’s never liked shoes. Derek was prepared for this.

He cleans Stiles’s heals with antiseptic wipes, while Stiles flinches and hisses, and then plasters thick bandages over the broken skin. Peter watches on, intrigued. First aid is not something many wolves have any knowledge off. Wolves heal too quickly from most injuries. But Derek has learned a lot since Stiles came into his life. He’s used to wounds that don’t heal in seconds.

He thinks, when Stiles leaves, he’ll carry one himself.

“Where did you get that stuff?” Peter asks curiously.

“Deaton,” Derek tells him.

“I’ll head further up,” Peter tells him. “Set up a camp for the night.”

He takes Stiles’s pack with him.

“I can carry it!” Stiles protests, but not loudly, and not for long.

When Stiles has his boots on again, they head in the direction Peter went. By the time they reach him, Peter has the tent set up and is making a campfire.

“Is that wise?” Derek asks.

Peter shrugs. “I thought, now that we’re away from Ruiz territory, the whole point was to attract attention.”

They eat, and then Stiles crawls into the tent to sleep.

“I’ll keep watch,” Peter says. “I’ll wake you in a few hours and you can take over.”

Nothing disturbs them that first night except for the hooting of a nearby barn owl.

 

***

 

By the fourth day, Derek thinks they won’t find anything.

They’re heading south, working on the theory that if Lyle Riggs entered the forest at Wildwood, and Stiles appeared at the southern end at Beacon Hills, then somewhere between those two points is his father, and his camp. But there’s a lot of territory between here and Beacon Hills, and none of it seems familiar to Stiles.

“I don’t remember any of this,” he says despondently as the afternoon softens into evening. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Peter tells him with a smile. “Why don’t we take a break? You can get your sketchbook out and draw something.”

Stiles smiles for the first time that day.

That night they set up camp on a bluff overlooking a valley. It’s beautiful. They can see for miles, but there’s nothing to see except trees and hills. There are no signs of habitation, human or otherwise.

Derek’s starting to think that they’ll eventually just walk out the other side of the Mendocino National Forest, and that’ll be it. They’ll be home, and Talia will give Stiles the bite, and he’ll survive—he _has_ to survive—and Derek will claim him as his mate and they’ll have a lifetime together.

That night they hear foxes.

 

***

 

On the sixth day they follow the path of a creek southwards. It leads them into a deep valley. Stiles is trudging along doggedly, still wincing a little as he walks. Peter is in the lead, and Derek is bringing up the rear. When Peter stops suddenly, Stiles almost barrels into him.

“What?” he asks.

That’s when Derek smells it. It’s a scent that causes him to recoil. He takes a few steps back, as does Peter. The sickening smell seems to follow him, curling around him like smoke. It makes him dizzy. It makes his stomach roil.

“What?” Stiles asks again.

Wolfsbane.

Derek recognizes the dark green leaves and the purple flowers. The approach to the valley is full of them. He wonders if it’s coincidence, or if they were cultivated here intentionally.

“This?” Stiles asks, reaching for a flower.

“Don’t!” Peter says. “It’s wolfsbane. And despite the name, it doesn’t discriminate. It’s toxic to humans as well.”

Stiles pulls his hand back.

“Do we keep going?” Derek asks in a low voice.

“If I were a sneaky little human, where would I hide?” Peter murmurs, then raises his voice. “Stiles, does any of this look familiar?”

Stiles’s forehead creases in a frown. “I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t know.”

They keep going.

 

***

 

It happens just on nightfall. Derek has no fucking idea how anyone got the drop on them, but one moment Peter’s walking in front of them, and the next he’s roaring in pain, half-shifted, the bolt of an arrow protruding from his chest.

“Peter!” Stiles screams.

Peter curls his fingers around the bolt and wrenches it free. Another one slams into his shoulder, and Peter stumbles to his knees.

“Stiles!” Derek reaches for him, and spins them both around just as a third arrow flies out of the growing darkness and embeds itself into Derek’s pack.

“Peter!” Stiles screams again.

Peter turns his shocked face toward them, and opens his mouth to speak. Black blood sprays out.

Wolfsbane poisoning.

Derek pushes Stiles to the ground. “Stay down!”

His claws are already extended, his fangs dropped. His only instinct is to protect his pack, to protect his mate. Rage courses through him as his wolf emerges, growling and snapping. He turns to face their attackers.

A hard punch to his chest, and then everything fucking burns. His vision is red, and swims in and out of focus as he stares down at the bolt sticking out of his chest.

He growls again.

A second bolt embeds itself in his thigh, and he drops to his knees.

There are figures in his periphery, moving quickly, weapons drawn. And then voices, low and urgent. “Get the last one! Get him!”

Derek roars, and slashes out with his claws. Gets nothing but air. “He’s human!” he tries to growl around his fangs. “Human!”

“Derek!” Stiles wails.

“Wait! Wait!” A different voice this time. “Hold your fire!”

Derek sways on his knees as the man approaches. The human. He blinks, and tries to focus, but all he can feel is the burn. The poison is like acid in his veins. He wants to howl in pain.

“Derek. Derek.” Stiles is beside him now, trembling hands pressing against his cheeks. “Derek, no. No!”

Derek whines.

“Derek, please, no, please!”

Derek wants to tell him that it’s not his fault. He wants to tell him that he loves him. He wants to tell him a thousand other things, but instead, he pitches forward onto the ground. A second before the blackness overcomes him, he hears the man again, his voice raw:

“Oh, Jesus! _Przemyslaw_?”

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

When Derek comes to, he has no idea where he is. It’s dark and stinks of mold and decay. And wolfsbane. His whole body aches, but he’s not dead. How the hell is he not dead? He tries to sit up, and a wave of dizziness catches him.

_Stiles._

He needs to get to Stiles.

He rolls onto his side, and tries to get his hands under himself. His wolf is angry but weak. Too weak.

He needs Stiles.

Derek whines when he can’t push himself up off the floor. He slumps down again. The sudden pressure of a hand against his bare shoulder makes him snarl and snap, and he turns his head quickly.

Peter’s eyes flash. “Easy!”

They’re both betas, but Peter has seniority. Derek feels his wolf flinch back.  

“Easy,” Peter says again, the glow fading from his eyes.

“You’re not dead either,” Derek rasps.

“I hope not,” Peter says. “Because if this is the afterlife, I’m a worse person than I thought.”

Derek groans as he finally manages to sit. He tries to take stock of their surroundings.

Dark and stinky, that’s all he’s really got.

Also, someone’s taken his shirt and his boots and his pack. Peter’s too.

“Where are we?”

“I’ve been awake for about three minutes longer than you,” Peter says. “Not exactly enough time to get a handle on the situation. I also tried to get a handle on the exit, but I couldn’t find one.”

Derek looks around. They’re in a small dark room, but that’s obviously a door over on the far wall. Derek can see a chink of light underneath it. Flickering light. A campfire, maybe.

“Oh, I saw the door,” Peter says, following his gaze with narrowed eyes. “Unfortunately I didn’t see the barrier of mountain ash a few feet in front of it until I hit it and it knocked me back on my ass. Feel free to give it a try if you think you’ll have better luck.”

Derek holds his hand against his aching chest. It aches where the arrow pierced him, but his skin is smooth to touch. He has a memory of burning pain, and black blood, and his body writhing as it tried uselessly to expel the poison. He thinks he remembers fire, a sudden flare of it bright enough to scour the shape of itself into his retinas, and then—fuck—pain worse than that of the poison. Running through his veins, bigger than the wolfsbane, chasing it down like a predator. Catching it, smothering it, _scorching_ it, and then he’d blacked out again.

He remembers cold fingers on his blazing skin, before someone dragged him away. He remembers: _“Derek. Derek. Oh god, Derek.”_

He remembers screaming.

His heartbeat quickens and his claws extend. “Where’s Stiles?”

Peter’s face is grave. “I don’t know.”

Derek feels a growl rise in his throat. His entire body thrums with the need to find Stiles and protect him. He can feel himself starting to shift, bones shifting as the wolf pushes its way to the surface. “Where is he?”

“Careful,” Peter says mildly, but Derek hears the warning tone underneath. “You can guess what these people will do to rabid dogs.”

 

***

 

Several hours later, the door opens and a man steps inside. He remains on his side of the mountain ash barrier. There’s a knife strapped to his thigh, and Derek has no doubt he knows how to use it. His face is weathered. His light brown hair is turning to gray. There are lines around his eyes.

He’s dressed in jeans and a threadbare t-shirt. His boots are worn.

A girl follows him. She doesn’t look any older than Stiles. She has pale skin and reddish hair. She’s wearing jeans and a button-up shirt, and trainers.

Derek’s not sure what he expected. People dressed in animal skins, maybe?

The man tosses something toward Derek. Derek catches it, then looks down to see what it is. It’s Stiles’s leather bracelet, stamped with the Hale triskele.

“What the hell was this doing around my boy’s wrist?”

Derek lifts the leather band to his face. It smells of Stiles. “Where is he?”

“You answer my questions, and just maybe I’ll think about answering yours,” the man says, his gaze narrow. “What the hell does it mean?”

Derek turns the leather band over in his palm. His throat constricts. “Is he okay?”

“That’s not an answer,” the man says.

Derek closes his hand around the band. He aches with the need to see Stiles, to touch him, to make sure he’s okay. “It means he’s pack.”

The man’s expression hardens. “What the hell did you do to him?”

Derek bristles, and curls his lip. “And what the hell are you insinuating?”

“Hold on!” Peter puts a hand on Derek’s shoulder, digging his fingers in. “You’ll have to forgive my nephew. He gets tetchy when people shoot him full of wolfsbane. He always was an overly sensitive boy.”

The man doesn’t react, but the girl arches her brows at Peter’s horribly mistimed attempt at levity.

Or maybe not mistimed.

It’s given Peter an opening, and he takes it.

“My nephew saved your boy,” he says. “Eight months ago he turned up in our territory. He was feral. He’d been living with foxes. He couldn’t speak, wouldn’t wear clothes, and didn’t know how to use a bathroom. Derek taught him all of that. Our pack sheltered him, and protected him, even though we knew exactly what a scientific marvel we had on our hands. And when we were finally able to figure out where he might have come from, we brought him back.”

The man presses his mouth into a thin line.

The girl regards them both speculatively.

“Can we start this again, perhaps?” Peter asks. He rises slowly to his feet, keeping his movements smooth. “My name is Peter Hale. My alpha is Talia Hale of Beacon Hills. This is my nephew, Derek Hale.” He raises his brows. “And you are?”

“Leaving,” the girl says suddenly, drawing the older man away.

The door slams after them.

“Well.” Peter sits down on the floor again. “So much for good manners.”

 

***

 

It’s the middle of the night when Derek hears the screaming.

 _Stiles_.

He’s screaming like the feral kit he was, all those months ago.

Derek leaps to his feet, Peter beside him, and they pace back and forth along the barrier of mountain ash that prevents them from reaching the door. A second later the doors bursts open and Stiles appears, wild-eyed.

The man from earlier is right behind him. “Przemyslaw, stop!”

Stiles leaps across the line of mountain ash into Derek’s arms. Derek holds him close, and crowds him up against the wall, hiding him from the man’s sight.

“Przemyslaw.”

Derek twists his head to look at the man.

He doesn’t see much of a familial resemblance to Stiles, but he has no doubt that this is his father. The human is wearing a horrified look on his face, like he’s expecting to see his son get ripped to shreds any second now.

“Oh, wonderful,” Peter says in a tone so low that only Derek can hear. “It now appears we have a hostage.”

Derek growls warningly at him.

“I want to go home, Derek!” Stiles pants. “I want to go home to Mom and the pack!”

The man’s face crumbles as he stumbles back outside.

 

***

 

The door to the tiny hut stays open. Outside, there are always at least three humans in sight. They’re armed with knives and arrows, all no doubt tipped in wolfsbane. The message is clear: use Stiles to break the mountain ash barrier, and we’ll kill you.

Stiles huddles between Peter and Derek against the back wall, staring at the humans and their weapons as though he’s afraid they’ll turn on him. He’s wearing his leather band again, and turning it around and around on his wrist.

Dawn creeps slowly in.

“What now?” Derek asks Peter in a low voice.

Peter knocks his head back against the wall with a dull thump. “I don’t know, Derek. I’m a professor of art history. This isn’t exactly my area of expertise. But I know one thing for sure.”

“What?”

Peter smiles ruefully. “They’re not just going to let us leave.”

 

***

 

Sometime in midmorning, the man tries again.

“Przemyslaw, come out of there, please.” He uses the same wary tone that Derek used with Stiles when he was feral. “Are you hungry? You must be hungry.”

Stiles turns his face away.

“Przemyslaw?”

Stiles buries his face in Derek’s chest. “My name is Stiles!”

 

***

 

In the evening, the red-headed girl returns. She’s obviously been through their packs. She tosses three protein bars across the barrier, then sits down cross-legged on the floor. She watches closely as Peter shifts forward to reach the protein bars, and passes one each to Derek and Stiles.

“Well,” she says at last. “I think this is what’s called a stalemate.” Her voice is soft, and she sounds almost disinterested, but there’s a flash of sharp intelligence in her eyes that her tone can’t entirely disguise.

“Yes,” Peter agrees, sounding just as bored. “You have us, and we have Stiles, and whatever are we to do? I believe it’s customary in these situations to demand a million dollars and a helicopter, but that seems rather pointless, doesn’t it?”

The girl purses her lips.

“Shall we start again?” Peter asks. “My name is Peter Hale. And you are?”

The girl lifts her chin. “Lydia. Lydia Martin.”

Peter smiles. “I’d say it’s a pleasure, but…” He shrugs. “I would have preferred meet under different circumstances.”

She raises her eyebrows. “I would have preferred not meet at all.”

Peter’s smile widens in genuine pleasure. “You wound me, Lydia Martin.”

“I very easily could,” she tells him primly.

Peter actually laughs.

Derek rubs Stiles on the back, and helps him unwrap his protein bar. Stiles stays huddled up close to him as he eats. Derek can hear his stomach growling.

“Here,” he whispers, and passes Stiles his bar as well.

Stiles shakes his head.

“Take it,” Derek says. “I don’t want it.”

“Liar,” Stiles whispers, but takes it anyway.

Peter crinkles the wrapper of his protein bar in his hands, and regards Lydia with his head on a slight tilt as though he finds her an intriguing puzzle he needs to solve. “As I said, I haven’t had much experience in this sort of thing, so I’m just going to lay all my metaphorical cards out on the table. Or the floor, in this case.”

“If you have metaphorical cards, you can certainly have a metaphorical table,” Lydia points out.

Peter cups a hand behind his ear. “You’ll have to speak up. I can’t hear you over the sound of the metaphorical DJ at my metaphorical house party.”

Stiles snorts.

Lydia actually cracks a smile.

“So, cards on the table,” Peter says. “We came here to track down Stiles’s family. Obviously that meeting could have gone better. Nevertheless, now we have Stiles on our side of the barrier, which is actually quite worthless in terms of negotiation. You’re intelligent enough to realize we’d never hurt him.”

Lydia inclines her head slightly.

“However,” Peter continues, “not only will the Ruiz pack wonder where we are when my car’s still sitting in their territory weeks from now, our pack knows exactly where we started from, and the course we intended to follow.”

Derek has a feeling Peter is overstating that. The pack knows they were starting in Wildwood and heading southwards, but there’s a lot of wilderness out there. He cards his fingers through Stiles’s hair and watches Lydia closely.

“Is that a threat?” she asks quietly.

“No,” Peter says. “It’s the truth. And if they alert the authorities… well, I have a feeling you don’t want any search and rescue teams combing the area, do you?”

She purses her lips.

“If Derek and I don’t walk out of here, that’s exactly what you’re going to get,” Peter says. He drops the balled up wrapper on the floor. “I know you people have probably only dealt with the occasional feral omega before, and I promise nobody really misses them, and nobody looks too hard when they vanish. But Derek and I are different, so you might need to reconsider your tactics in dealing with us. You could have left us for dead after you shot us, and I have no doubt that it was Stiles who made you change your minds on that. So why don’t you listen to him again? We are no threat to you. We won’t tell anyone you’re here. We have protected Stiles for months, and that protection now extends to you, and to your entire community.”

“You’re offering us your protection?” Lydia asks, and laughs suddenly. “You’re in no position to offer us anything!”

“I am,” Peter counters. “For all of the reasons I just mentioned. And don’t pretend you’re not smart enough to know it’s the truth.”

Lydia’s expression hardens.

“Let me tell you what else I know,” Peter says. “Despite the fact that this entire place stinks of mountain ash and wolfsbane, I can smell something else as well. Ketones. You’re hungry, Lydia. You’re all so very hungry. Starving, almost. And this hut is almost falling down. Not the best place to put two strong predators, unless, of course, it’s the most secure place in your camp. I think that maybe it is. I think that this entire place is falling down, and one more bad winter could just finish you all off.”

Derek hears Lydia’s heartbeat race.

He’s right. Peter is right.

“You need our silence, Lydia,” Peter says quietly. “You people are in no condition to defend yourselves, however many tricky little runes and herbs allowed you to take Derek and I by surprise. I can’t make you trust us, but, at this point, it might be your only option. Do you really have anything left to lose?”

“Our freedom,” she says tightly.

“Who said anything about taking your freedom?”

“We only survive because we’re a secret.”

“Good,” Peter says with a smile. “We agree on something. And if you don’t let Derek and I leave, how long will you stay a secret?” He picks the wrapper up again and smoothes it out underneath his fingers. “Just something for you to think about.”

Lydia leaves.

 

***

 

“You’re a terrible negotiator,” Derek says in the middle of the night.

Stiles is snoring against his chest.

“Probably,” Peter agrees.

“Even if they agree to let us leave, I’m not going without Stiles.”

“That’s not your decision,” Peter reminds him.

Derek snorts. “Really? You said these people are close to starvation. And you saw Stiles wants nothing to do with his father!”

There is no way he’s leaving Stiles here.

“I didn’t see that at all,” Peter says. “I saw a boy’s who’s terrified we were attacked, and I saw a man who thinks we’re the same monsters who killed his wife. The same monsters his son threw himself toward. But remember, it was because of his father that Stiles wanted to come here. Don’t dismiss their bond as broken, just because you want it to be true.”

“He wants to go home.”

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Peter raises his eyebrows. “He _is_ home.”

 

***

 

In the morning, the man enters the hut. “Stiles?”

Stiles looks up at him, eyes wide and full of hope.

“That’s your name now?” the man asks gruffly. “Stiles?”

Stiles nods.

The man attempts a wavering smile. “You never liked Przemyslaw.”

“Could never spell it,” Stiles mutters.

The man huffs out something that might almost be a laugh.

Stiles shuffles forward slightly, as though drawn to the sound, and Derek resists the urge to tug him back into his embrace.

The man looks from Derek to Peter, and then back again. He takes a step forward. “I think we need to talk.”

Derek nods sharply.

“My name is John Stilinski,” the man says. He draws the toe of his boot through the mountain ash, breaking the barrier. “I want to thank you for saving my son.”


	19. Chapter 19

Sunlight blinds Derek as he steps outside for the first time in days. Stiles’s hand is clasped tightly in his own. Without that, Derek doesn’t think he’d be able to walk past the hostile stares of the watching humans without responding in kind. And now is not the time to shift.

Derek sees a woman wearing his shirt, and a man wearing Peter's boots. He wonders if there’s anything left of their belongings at all.

The camp is as dilapidated as Peter suspected. Derek remembers more buildings than this from the drawings that Stiles made, and he wonders if they were sacrificed during the winter for firewood. Those that remain standing have sagging roofs, and are alarmingly open to the weather. Derek had thought that the humans would at least be housed in log cabins, but many of the buildings appear to be nothing more than lean-to structures, some with canvas nailed over what Derek assumes are gaping holes in the walls.

John Stilinksi follows Derek’s gaze and his expression tightens. “We used to be better situated. We lost some people in the winter. Sickness. Don’t have enough hands left.”

No. No way can Derek leave Stiles here. 

“How many are you?” Peter asks, keeping his voice soft.

“Thirty-eight.”

That’s not a sustainable population. Derek shouldn’t be surprised, he supposes. They’re not a sustainable species. Not anymore.

Derek’s bare feet crunch on leaves as John leads them over to what must be his home. It’s one of the better structures in the tiny camp, in that it has all of its walls. No door though. John shoves a plastic sheet aside to let them in.

There’s not a lot inside the hut. Derek’s gaze slides over the thin mattress on the floor, to the dented tin cups and plates on the only shelf in the place. There are a few books beside them, and that surprises him for some reason. There’s a hook on the wall, and a jacket hanging from it. The jacket looks thin. The cuffs are frayed. Beside the mattress there is a bucket half-filled with water. At the head of the bed there is a small wooden crate, the sort Derek has seen fruit and vegetables transported in. Arrows bristle from it, and Derek sees a knife and some twine, and a brace of strong branches with the bark stripped off already. He wonders if that’s how John spends his nights, sitting on the mattress making arrows.

Their packs are lying in the corner.

“Pull up a seat,” John says, even though there’s not a seat to be seen.

Peter and Derek sit on the floor.

John sits on the mattress, his bones creaking as he eases himself down.

Stiles looks between them, then sits next to his father on the mattress. He looks guilty about it, until Derek shows him a smile. Then his shoulders slump as he relaxes, and he leans against his dad a little.

“Stiles hasn’t said much about what happened,” John says at last.

Stiles looks at him anxiously.

“Last winter, we found him on our territory,” Derek says. “He was injured, so we took him home. That’s it.”

Except it’s so much more than that. It’s laughing as he bribed Stiles with cookies. It’s Stiles's obsession with flushing the toilet. It’s Stiles learning so much, every single day, that Derek's head swam. It’s a movie under the stars, and a kiss that surprised them both. It’s Stiles letting Alex paint his nails, and giving piggyback rides to Jacob, and stealing cookies from under Aunt Amy’s nose, and filling the house with the sound of his laughter. It’s _pack_ and _family_ and _mate_.

“He’d been living with foxes,” Peter adds. “We think that’s what saved him, when he went missing from here. He was feral. He couldn’t speak.”

“They saved me, Dad,” Stiles says. He twists his fingers in his lap. “The Hales saved me.”

John nods. His eyes shine. When he speaks, his voice is rough. “Kiddo, I’m sorry. I _looked_. I looked.”

“It’s my fault.” Stiles blinks, and tears slide down his face. “I wanted to catch up with you, but I got lost, and Mom—” He swallows. “Mom…”

“You saw that?” John’s voice breaks. “Oh, Jesus. You saw that.”

Stiles sobs and launches himself into his father’s embrace. John wraps his arms around his boy and rocks him back and forth as Stiles cries. Derek can almost see the years of separation dissolving between them. 

Derek can’t compete with this. Not when they so obviously belong together. And a part of him doesn’t want to see this in terms of a competition—the winner takes Stiles—but his wolf doesn’t know how else to understand it. His wolf is possessive and single-minded. It doesn’t want to share.

“Thank you,” John says over Stiles’s shoulder, blinking back his tears. He’s holding Stiles like he’ll never let him go. “Thank you for bringing him back.”

It’s all Derek can do to nod.

 

***

 

It’s a strange sensation, to walk around and know that every pair of eyes is trained on him. As is every weapon. But Stiles is eager to rediscover the camp, and Derek doesn’t want to let him go alone. Peter walks with them. So does John.

“There used to be something here,” Stiles says. “I used to come here.”

“Caroline’s hut was here,” John says. “She died a few years back. She used to feed you kids honey.” He shakes his head. “We needed the wood to make repairs.”

Stiles licks his lips as though he’s trying to remember the taste of the honey. A frown creases his brow. “It used to be bigger. Everything used to be bigger.”

“Used to be,” John echoes.

Stiles fishes in the pocket of his cargoes, and brings out the broken tag. It gleams dully in the light. “I have this.”

John takes it in his shaking hand. “This was… this was my father’s. Can’t believe you still have it.”

Stiles chews his lower lip.

“You remember why I gave this to you?”

Stiles shakes his head.

John presses it back into Stiles’s hands, then grips his shoulder tightly for a moment. “For luck. I gave it to you for luck, because Scott had that damn rabbit’s foot, and you wanted something too.”

Stiles looks achingly hopeful. “Scott?”

For a second Derek’s sure that the news will be bad, that Stiles’s friend will be just another name consigned to memory.

“Out foraging,” John says. “Should be back any day now.”

Stiles sags in relief.

“Foraging,” Peter says quietly. “What does that entail? I can’t help but notice you’re not all dressed in rabbit skins.”

“Mostly it means foraging,” John acknowledges with a curt nod. “Every few months we get a group up and hit a town, raid a charity bin or two. It’s been a while though. It’s not safe.”

“But you’ve never been caught,” Peter says. “If you had been, it’d been all over the news.”

“We’ve had some close calls.” John forces a smile as he ruffles Stiles’s hair. “But we’re doing okay.”

It’s a blatant lie, but they let it pass.

  

***

 

That afternoon, Peter offers to hunt. Derek knows it isn’t entirely altruistic. The full moon is close, and their wolves are restless.

John and the humans aren’t comfortable with the idea, but Stiles convinces them.

“You should! Dad, let him! At ho—at the Hale house, we always ate rabbit whenever it was full moon, because they always caught something! One time we had venison. They’re really good, really fast, and you won’t have to waste any arrows!”

Derek has never stripped down in front of quite so many curious eyes before.

He and Peter leave their jeans and underwear in Stiles’s care, and then they shift. Derek’s aware of the gasps of shock and fear from the assembled audience, and he curls his lip and barely suppresses a snarl.

Then Stiles’s hands are batting him playfully on the muzzle, heedless of his fangs. “He’s great. Aren’t they both great?”

Stiles tugs on his ears and runs his fingers through his fur.

“They can do a full shift!” Lydia exclaims. “Not just the half-form!”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and Derek hears the pride in his voice. “All the Hales can.”

Peter knocks his muzzle against Derek’s side, and they head out of the camp.

It good to run. It’s a relief to let his wolf take the lead for once, to strip away all his anxieties and fears about the future, and just concentrate on hunting. On providing for his mate.

It doesn’t take long to chase down a rabbit. Derek sinks his fangs deep into its neck, feeling the satisfying crunch as he snaps its spine, and the burst of hot, sweet blood fills his mouth. He wants to tear it apart then and there, he’s _hungry_ , but Stiles is hungry too. He heads back to the camp, the rabbit flopping between his jaws, and drops his catch on the ground.

He basks in Stiles’s enthusiastic praise for a moment before he heads out again.

This time Stiles and a few of the humans follow, stooping to collect what game Derek and Peter find. Five more rabbits, and eight squirrels. They catch the scent of deer on the air, but by that time the afternoon is softening into evening, and Stiles calls them back toward camp.

“Could have got a deer,” Derek mutters as soon as he’s shifted and is stepping back into his jeans.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Peter says.

Derek might be disappointed in their haul, but the John and the other humans aren’t. The rabbits and squirrels will easily stretch their supplies for another few days.

Most of the humans eat together, around the central fire, but Derek and Peter are eating in John’s hut, with Stiles and Lydia. It’s a measure of trust that they’re no longer shadowed by humans with weapons, but they’re not quite welcomed yet. Derek supposes that’s as good as they can hope for.

“Thank you for this,” John says gravely as they eat.

“It was our pleasure,” Peter says.

The hut is illuminated by candlelight. Stiles sits next to his father on his mattress, but pulls Derek down close. They eat quietly, in what Derek supposes is the closest they’ll get to companionable silence. Stiles reaches up at one point and touches Derek’s cheek, his mouth curved into a gentle smile, and his eyes bright. Derek glances at John, and the man holds his gaze for a moment before he looks away.

“Stiles, you should show your father your pictures,” Peter says, nodding toward their packs.

Stiles scrambles for his pack, and wrenches it open. His belongings haven’t been touched, Derek notes. Good. Stiles pulls his sketchbook out.

“I did some of them before I left ho—before I left.” Stiles stumbles over the word he obviously doesn’t want to say, and John smiles and pretends not to notice the slip. “Peter got me paints and everything. I only brought my pencils with me.”

Lydia cranes her neck to see as Stiles opens his sketchbook.

“I did some in charcoal too,” Stiles says. “That gets messy. You have to spray stuff on it when you’re finished so it doesn’t smudge. Peter stole me some from Stanford!”

“Borrowed,” Peter corrects mildly, although it was no such thing. “Stiles has a very good eye.”

John turns the pages of the sketchbook, his blunt fingers sliding down the edges gently, almost as though he’s afraid to touch.

“This is the tree I can see from my window,” Stiles says, jabbing his finger against the page. “Oooh, and this is Alex. Alex is thirteen. He’s my friend.”

John nods.

Stiles stills suddenly as he turns the page again. “Oh.”

It’s the dark-haired woman with the pale face and the wide smile. Stiles’s mom.

Derek hears John’s sharp intake of breath, and the way his heartbeat quickens.

“You painted your mom,” John says. His voice hitches. “You painted Claudia.”

“I didn’t, um, I didn’t know if I remembered her right,” Stiles says, jiggling his leg anxiously. “I couldn’t remember what side the mole on her cheek was, or how many she had, and I tried to remember, but I think maybe I got it wrong.”

“It’s perfect,” John says gruffly. He puts an arm around Stiles. “Kiddo, it’s perfect.”

Stiles smiles broadly, and a flush rises on his face.

Derek’s glad to see him happy, even though it makes his wolf whine.

“So, tell me,” Peter says to Lydia. “How exactly did your people sneak up on us the other night?”

“Oh, you said it yourself yesterday,” Lydia says with a prim smile. “Herbs and runes.”

“Well, I’m not one to usually believe that nonsense about magic,” Peter says, “but it was _something_. I’m almost inclined to think all the old stories about magical human emissaries are true.”

“Humans who helped wolf packs of their own free will?” Lydia asks, raising her eyebrows. “Now that has to be a fairytale.”

“I notice you’re not denying the part about the magic.”

Lydia gives him the side eye. “I can’t imagine why you think I’m any sort of authority on the subject, or have any interest in it at all.”

“Oh, okay,” Peter says. “That’s a shame.”

Lydia’s gaze sharpens. “Why is that a shame?”

Peter wipes his fingers on his jeans. “Well, all the stories say that wolf packs had human emissaries because we just can’t work magic. And even though it’s been generations since we lost the humans, well, packs like mine have kept the books. They’re oddities, I suppose. Utterly useless as anything except collectables for those of us who can’t use them. But, as you say, fairytales.”

Lydia reaches out and closes her fingers tightly around his wrist. “You have emissary books?”

“Yes,” Peter says mildly. He drops his gaze to her hand.

Lydia pulls her hand back, eyes suddenly wide, as though she’s shocked to have touched him.

“The Hales have a whole big room full of books,” Stiles says. “It’s called a library. Mark is teaching me how to read again.”

Alex _is_ his friend.

Mark _is_ teaching him to read.

Derek tries not to hope that Stiles’s use of present tense means he’s made his choice, and that he’ll be coming home with Derek and Peter. Because he also sees the way that Stiles’s is hanging off every word his dad says, leaning into every touch, and smiling broadly at every quirk of the man’s mouth.

“You’re so talented, kid,” John says at last, and Stiles practically melts under his praise.

Later, when Derek and Stiles head outside to pee, Stiles is still floating on air.

“Hey, remember when I peed on the chickens?” he asks with a snort, drawing Derek into the first line of trees.

“I remember,” Derek smiles. “And I bet the chickens remember too.”

Stiles snorts again, and finds a tree.

Derek finds one nearby.

“Hey, Der?” Stiles asks in the darkness.

“What?”

“This isn’t how I remember the camp.” Stiles sighs, and Derek hears the rasp of his zip as he fastens his cargoes back up. “When I was little, I don’t remember being hungry. I think that we had more stuff then too.”

Derek isn’t sure what to say. He closes the distance between them, and cups his hand around the back of Stiles’s neck. It’s always been a gesture that comforts them both.

“There were more people too.” Then Stiles lowers his voice as though he’s afraid he’s telling some sort of terrible secret: “It’s nicer at home.”

“I know.” Derek leans in and presses a kiss to Stiles’s forehead.

“Derek.” Stiles dips his head and nuzzles against Derek’s neck. His breath is hot. “I don’t know what to _do_.”

Derek keeps one hand cupped around the back of Stiles’s neck. He slides his other hand up and down his spine. “I know, Stiles, I know. Me neither.”

Stiles huffs, and then lifts his head again. He juts his chin out. “This time,” he says, “you don’t get to decide what’s best for me. This time we figure it out together! Okay?" 

Derek hardly has time to nod before Stiles pushes him back against a tree and kisses him fiercely.  


	20. Chapter 20

The foraging party gets back just after dawn.

Five figures, walking slowly into camp, illuminated from behind by the glow of the rising sun. There are four men and one woman. Three of the men and the woman are lugging bags. The fourth man, who appears no older than a teenager, is carrying nothing. His breathing is the most labored of all of them though. His heartbeat is worryingly fast.

John hurries through the camp to meet them.

“Melissa.” John lifts the bag off her. “Everything okay?” 

Derek, standing in the doorway of the hut he’s sharing with Peter, hears the anxiety in the woman’s tone when she replies.

“He had an attack last night. I thought we’d lost him.” The woman glances worriedly at the boy, who is still trudging doggedly along beside the others, gaze fixed on the ground. He’s struggling like he’s just run a marathon.

Whatever John is going to say in response to that is cut off when Stiles barrels out toward the group. “Scott! Scotty!”

The boy looks up sharply. His face is a mask of shock. His jaw drops. “Przemyslaw?”

“Scotty!” Stiles flings himself into the boy’s arms. “Holy shit! Scotty!”

Scott laughs. The incredulous sound spirals into a coughing fit, during which he goes red in the face but waves away any help, and ends on a weak wheeze. “Przemyslaw!”

Stiles is grinning madly. He pulls back from Scott’s embrace, but keeps a tight hold on Scott’s shoulders. He grips him tightly while he stares at him, gaze darting all over him as though he’s trying to drink in every detail. “It’s Stiles now. My name is Stiles now.”

Scott sucks in a wet-sounding breath.

“Scotty, you okay?”

“Y-yeah.” Scott makes a face. His dark eyes are almost as wide as Stiles’s. “What happened to you, bro?”

“Derek rescued me.” Stiles grins in Derek’s direction.

Derek inclines his head at Scott. He has no doubt that winning Scott’s approval is just as important, and just as difficult, as winning John’s. These are the most important people in Stiles’s life. Whether they know it or not, that means they matter to Derek. It’s how pack works. Family, too.

Scott looks bemused for a second, then his smile wavers and his forehead wrinkles in a frown. “Bro…”

“He’s a wolf,” Stiles says. “He saved me and brought me back here.”

Scott’s still eyeing Derek warily. “Oh, that’s, um, that’s cool.” He manages to make it sound like a question.

“It is cool. It’s very cool.” Stiles’s grin softens into something less manic as he catches Derek’s gaze and holds it. “Derek is the best.”

Derek’s mouth quirks up, and warmth floods through him.

Behind him in the little hut that was their prison and is now apparently their bedroom, Peter yawns and stretches, and mutters under his breath about having spent the night sleeping on the floor. He’s only complaining for the sake of it, Derek knows, since he spent most of the night in his shifted form, nose resting on his paws, snoring like a chainsaw. Stiles had decided to sleep with Derek and Peter instead of with his father. Derek isn’t sure if it’s because Stiles doesn’t entirely trust the other humans not to attempt to harm them when he’s not there, or if he just couldn’t bear to be away from Derek for a whole night. Stiles had started out grumbling about Peter’s wolfy snores, but ended up using him as a pillow and snoring in tandem with him.

“Derek, I’m gonna go talk with Scott and his mom, okay?” Stiles calls out to him.   

Derek nods his understanding.

Peter finally appears beside Derek, and peers after the foraging party. “The famous Scott?”

Derek nods.

“Is he the one who can’t breathe?” Peter asks curiously.

“Yes.”

“Huh. Peter stretches. “So, I thought today we might collect some firewood.”

“Firewood?” Derek closes his eyes briefly and rubs away the start of what promises to be a killer of a stress headache. He sighs. “Peter, what are we still doing here?”

He doesn’t want to push Stiles to make a decision, but he knows they can't just hang around in the humans’ camp indefinitely. The waiting is the worst, Derek thinks, and a small voice on the back of his mind tells him that he’ll probably continue to believe that until Stiles proves him wrong by choosing to stay here. If that happens, he'll look back on these moments of doubt and uncertainty like they were Halcyon days. 

“I don’t know about you, but I’m winning hearts and minds,” Peter says. He quirks his mouth in a smile, then rubs his hands together briskly. “So, do you want to help me with the firewood?”

 

***

 

Scott McCall is never going to be Derek’s best friend. He’s grateful, like John is, that Derek brought Stiles home, but he’s jealous too. Stiles isn’t the best friend he lost when he was nine, the boy who was as close as a brother. Derek’s brought home a stranger, and sometimes Scott looks at him like he’s not sure if it's a good thing or not.

He and Derek have that in common, at least.

Derek's few conversations with Scott are stilted and awkward, and Stiles buzzes anxiously between them, chattering nonstop as though he thinks he can bridge the gap between them if only he can fill it with enough words. 

“The problem,” Peter says as he uses his claws to strip the bark off branches that will make suitable arrows, “is that you never lied to him.”

Derek paces back and forth in the sunlight, watching one of the camp’s residents watch him back. The girl is about seven or eight. As far as Derek can see, she’s the youngest child in the camp. He thinks that she may be the only child in the camp. She reminds him a little of his cousin Sarah, sharp-eyed and curious, except where Sarah is sturdy and dark-haired, this little girl is thin and has hair as pale and flyaway as spider’s silk. She keeps her distance from Derek and Peter, but keeps casting curious glances in their direction. 

Stiles is off somewhere with Scott. 

Derek sighs. “How is it a problem that I never lied to him?”

“Mmm.” Peter flashes a quick smile at the little girl. “Your problem is you never said, ‘Well, Stiles, I think your father is probably dead, and it’s not even worth looking for him because I have no idea where to start.’ That would have done the trick.”

Derek squats down onto his haunches and digs a claw through the dirt. “You were the one who helped me figure out about Wildwood!”

“I was the one who made sure you had all the information,” Peter counters, the sunlight gleaming in his eyes. He fixes his gaze on Derek and shrugs. “You didn’t have to tell Stiles any of it.”

Derek thinks back to the way Stiles screamed at him when he left for college. He thinks back to the kiss under the trees the night before, when Stiles told Derek that he didn’t get to make decisions for him anymore. And Jesus. Stiles is right. He’s so right. “I couldn’t have kept it from him, Peter. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

“But you might have been able to live with Stiles,” Peter points out.

Peter’s always been an asshole.

Derek stands up and wipes his fingers on his jeans. “As long as Stiles is happy, that’s all that matters.”

He has to hold on to that. It might be his only consolation, when all this is over. 

“What the hell is that matter with you?” Peter asks, arching a brow. “We’ve talked before about this irritating martyr complex of yours. Derek, why don’t you ever for once think that, fuck it, you deserve _everything_?”

Derek raises his brows. “What?”

Peter sighs, and sets the branches aside. “Good Lord. You really are obtuse, aren’t you? How is that even possible? You were such a clever child. So promising.”

Derek glowers.“How am I being obtuse?" 

Peter waves his hand airily. “The fact that you even need to ask that question, my dear nephew, is proof of it.”

Sometimes Derek just wants to punch Peter in the face. Instead, he stalks away and, because there's nothing else to do, collects firewood. 

Over the next few days, he watches Peter more closely. He knows that when Peter puts his mind to something he could run rings around Machiavelli. He has a feeling that Lydia knows as well. She keeps a close eye on Peter. Peter knows, of course, and preens at the attention.

Peter is ridiculous.

He’s also incredibly subtle when he wants to be.

He talks to John Stilinksi about Stiles’s artistic talent, and how it could develop into something really special. But, more importantly, he talks about how Stiles used art to express himself when he didn’t have his words back yet. He talks about Stiles’s bedroom full of art supplies, and the pictures that he’s painted on the walls.

John should be so proud of his son, Peter says, and smiles as though he doesn’t see the way he’s so easily crushed the man’s dignity, the way he's so easily pointed out how John can't nurture Stiles's talent in this place. 

Sometimes Peter’s not subtle at all.

He brings a whole deer back to camp. A whole fucking deer. They don't eat in John's hut that night. Instead, he and Derek sit around the fire with the rest of the humans. The little girl even sidles up and sits down next to Derek shyly, and nobody wrenches her away from him. A few of the humans even engage Peter and Derek in conversation, asking about the outside world. Derek lets Peter do most of the talking. He's better at it by far. And when they've eaten and the fire is burning down and Stiles is leaning into Derek's side and sighing sleepily against him, it feels perfect. Derek might never be a part of this community, but at least he knows he's not hated by them. Neither a friend nor an enemy, but something in between. It's enough, he supposes. He's not sure he has a right to hope for anything more, but then he's never been as ambitious as Peter. 

Sometimes Peter’s not as subtle as he thinks he is.

It’s their fourth day in camp when Derek finally realizes just exactly what Peter is trying to do. And it’s audacious.

Peter mentions the books again in front of Lydia.

“I know what you’re doing,” she says, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Do you?” Peter asks smoothly. “And what do you think of it?”

She looks him up and down. “I’m reserving my opinion on that.”

Peter smiles.

Lydia doesn’t return the smile, but the look she gives him isn’t hostile. It’s appraising. Speculative. Nobody has explained to Derek exactly how the hierarchy in the camp works, but he knows Lydia’s somewhere at the top. She might only be about the same age as Stiles and Scott, but she carries authority here. He guesses it has something to do with her runes and her herbs. She keeps her secrets close to her chest, but Derek has no doubt that she has power, possibly even the sort of power that human emissaries are rumored to have held, and she’d do a lot to get her hands on the books in the Hale library.

When Peter mentions to Melissa, Scott’s mother, that another winter in the camp will be difficult for Scott to manage with his asthma, Derek knows for sure what Peter’s planning. What he’s been planning since the moment they arrived, probably, if not before. And hell, it might even work. 

Derek borrows Stiles’s sketchpad and pencils and draws a few quick designs. He thinks of the tiny houses he and Boyd used to plan. He knows the dimensions of shipping containers. He knows exactly how to utilize the limited space inside them, and how to make them both functional and comfortable. And really, anything is better than this.

Stiles watches him closely, a hopeful look on his face. He opens and closes his mouth more than a few times, but can’t quite bring himself to ask the question.

“It could work,” Derek tells him. “We could make it work.”

“You’ll help build a better camp?” Stiles asks at last.

“With solar power,” Derek says. “And running water.”

“You’d do that for us?” Stiles asks in a whisper.

Derek catches Pater’s gaze. Time to shed the martyr complex.

“I’d be doing it for me too,” Derek says. “We’d build them in the Preserve, Stiles, on Hale pack territory.”

Stiles looks equal parts terrified and elated. “How are we going to convince my dad?”

 

***

 

It’s easier than it should be to convince John to come back with them to Beacon Hills. Lydia too. But then Peter’s been putting this idea in their heads since his first morning in camp. Stiles is ecstatic. He’s sure that if his dad and Lydia speak to Talia then they’ll agree to move to the Hale territory, everything will be okay. Derek’s not so sure. The humans are rightfully terrified of losing their freedom, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to stay a secret if they move closer to civilization.

At least, he’s not sure there is.

“Funny thing,” Peter says. “Those runes you used so that you got the drop on us, or whatever little hedgewitch magic you used, I’ve read about something similar before.”

“Read?” Lydia asks keenly, walking beside them as they head northward back toward Wildwood and the SUV.

“Yes, in the library,” Peter says. “Entire books full of arcane nonsense that the emissaries once used. Entire books with entire chapters dedicated to disguising scents. Fascinating stuff.”

For once Derek doesn’t regret all those hours Peter spent, drunk and maudlin, leafing through the books in the library.

“Is that even possible?” Lydia asks, no trace of sarcasm in her tone. No trace of anything except hope.

“I don’t know,” Peter tells her. “But I’d like to find out. Wouldn’t you?”

She doesn’t answer, but the slight curl of her lips tells the truth just as clearly as any words could.

When they stop for a break, Stiles shows Derek's designs to his dad, and John listens carefully, nodding. There's an uncomfortable expression on his face, and it takes Derek a while to realize what it is. It's hope, etching its way across the features of a man entirely unused to wearing it. 

 

***

 

“Holy shit,” John says when the SUV starts, his face going suddenly pale.

Stiles is in the backseat, buckled in between John and Lydia. “I know, right?” he beams. “If you want to vomit, you have to tell Peter so he can stop the car.”

Derek grins, and reaches back.

Stiles entwines their fingers. “Oh, and if we get pulled over, we all have to hide under the blanket.”

“I don’t think we’ll fit,” Lydia says. She’s clutching her seatbelt tightly as they pull out onto the road.

She has a point.

Derek glances at Peter.

“Well,” Peter says with a smile. “We’d just better make sure we don’t get pulled over.”

Derek quirks an eyebrow.

“It’s been a while since I was in a police chase,” Peter says thoughtfully.

Stiles laughs brightly as though he thinks it's a joke.

Derek really wishes he couldn’t read his uncle’s steady heartbeat. There are some things he’d rather not know were the truth.


	21. Chapter 21

It’s late evening when they get back to Beacon Hills. Derek can feel the excitement radiating from Stiles as they turn down the road into the Preserve. He’s practically vibrating with it as they get closer and closer to the house. John and Lydia are tense, their scents sharp with anxiety. When Peter pulls the car up at the front of the house, Stiles is already clambering over his father to get to the door.  

“Stiles!” Alex races out the front door, the rest of the pack behind him. “Stiles! It’s Stiles!”

Stiles tumbles out of the car and headfirst into Alex’s arms. “Alex!”

Their hug is something that could be easily mistaken for an aggressive wrestling move. It’s full of elbows and strangleholds. When Stiles finally emerges triumphant, he’s red-faced and flushed.

“Dad, this is Alex. Alex, this is my dad.”

John looks a little startled at watching his son grapple with a wolf and come out grinning.

Peter takes John by the shoulder. “Now, Stiles, your father should meet Talia first.”

Derek catches Talia’s eye as she descends the few steps from the front porch. She looks relaxed and welcoming, but Derek can sense the tension underneath the surface. John and Lydia approach her cautiously, gazes shifting to each member of the pack.

Derek looks and sees his family. His mom, and his dad. He sees Laura and Mark. Laura has Jacob on her hip, and Cassie is clinging to Mark’s thigh. William and Kaylee are standing close together. Kaylee is holding Sarah’s hand. Nate is wrinkling his nose.

Derek sees Clare and Amy. He sees Cora and Malia and Matty.

He sees pack.

 _Family_.

He knows that John and Lydia see something very, very different.

Talia holds out her hand. “My name is Talia Hale, alpha of the Hale pack. Welcome to my home.”

John holds her gaze as he takes her hand. “John Stilinski.”

Talia smiles warmly. “Why don’t you call come inside, and get comfortable, and then we’ll talk.”

John and Lydia exchange a glance, before John nods, and they follow Talia inside.

 

***

 

Stiles is ecstatic to be home, and Derek’s glad to have him there. He’d be ecstatic too, except while Stiles is upstairs showing John and Lydia how to use the shower, Derek and Peter are downstairs in the kitchen, getting glared at by Talia.

“First of all, we had no cell phone service,” Peter says, showing Talia his palms. “And then, by the time we got back on the road, our batteries were dead. Hence the surprise.”

“You can’t just drop something this big on me with no warning,” Talia hisses, and then closes her eyes briefly. “Well, _you_ obviously can, Peter, because you’ve been a royal pain in my ass since the moment you were born, but Derek? Really, Derek?”

“We had no way of warning you,” Derek says. “And, Mom, these people are close to starving. We couldn’t leave Stiles there.”

Talia rubs her temples. “Except how is this supposed to work? We could barely hide Stiles. We can’t hide nearly forty people!”

“Let me worry about that,” Peter says, and stoops to kiss her on the cheek. “It’s all under control, Talia.”

“You always say that,” she grumbles.

“And I’m always right,” Peter grins, stepping back.

Talia sighs. “Go. Go and get cleaned up. I need you back down here while I figure out what the hell I’m going to tell those people.”

“Call Deaton,” Peter says. “Seriously, call Deaton to be here for this!”

“You’re not the alpha,” Talia reminds him, but digs her phone out of her pocket as Peter heads upstairs. “I’m not calling Deaton, so there,” she mutters. “I’m _texting_ him.”

Sometimes Derek thinks it’s a miracle that Talia and Peter didn’t murder each other somewhere on the very rocky road to adulthood.

Talia pats Derek on the cheek. “You need a shave.”

“I know.”

“You did good,” Talia tells him, bringing her other hand up so that she’s cupping his face. Her mouth curves up in a soft smile, the sort that, when he was a kid, Derek used to imagine she saved just for him.

“You sure?” Derek asks.

“I’m sure, baby,” she says, and her smile broadens. “But an alpha has to growl a little bit, you know? It’s in our nature. But you did _good_.”

“Thanks, Mom.” He basks for a moment in his mother’s warmth and in his alpha’s approval.

She pats him on the cheek again. “Now go upstairs and get cleaned up, and don’t take too long about it.”

Derek heads upstairs, smiling. He finds Stiles in his room. Stiles is pink and clean from his shower. He's showing John the painting on his walls. John looks different. His hair is damp and slicked back. It’s starting to spring up in odd places as it dries, as unruly as Stiles’s. John looks somehow softer around the edges too, and less weathered. Maybe it was the hot shower, or maybe it's the borrowed clothes; he looks like a different man than the one Derek had met in the camp. He looks younger, somehow, and somehow uncertain. Maybe he’s just wondering how his son can be so happy and unafraid, surrounded by wolves.

Stiles’s eyes are bright. “Dad, do you like my painting?”

John nods, and clasps Stiles by the shoulder. “You painted your mom and me.”

“Mmm. Peter said I should only paint happy memories on my wall, and you and Mom were the happiest I could think of.”

John’s breath hitches.

Derek gives them some privacy.

The bathroom is still full of steam when he gets there. He sets his clean clothes down on the counter and steps into the shower. It’s a relief to grab a washcloth and some shower gel and actually scrub away the grit and grime of the past few weeks. He thinks of the humans still out in the camp—Melissa, and Scott, and all the rest—and how something as simple as a hot shower, something Derek takes for granted, could dramatically improve not only their health, but the quality of their lives.

Derek is determined to make it happen for them.

He closes his eyes under the spray of the shower.

He hears the bathroom door opening and shutting, and doesn’t need to open his eyes to know who it is. Stiles’s scent is unique. Still, it’s unexpected when Stiles slips into the shower with him, and wraps his arms around Derek from behind.

“Stiles,” he murmurs, torn between amusement and a sudden low burn of desire.

Stiles’s body is slick and wet against his as their skin slides together. “Can we?”

Derek turns, letting the shower spray hit him on his back. Stiles blinks droplets out of his eyelashes. They run down his face like tears, but he’s grinning. His body is sleek and shines with water.

“You’re so beautiful,” Derek tells him earnestly.

Stiles laughs at that.

“What’s so funny?” Derek nudges Stiles’s cheek with his jaw.

“Have you even seen yourself?” Stiles asks him, and captures his mouth in a brief, wet kiss. “Do you have eyes?”

“Only for you,” Derek tells him honestly.

Stiles laughs again. “I love you.”

Derek kisses him. “I love you too.”

 

***

 

When Derek and Stiles appear in the doorway of the library, fingers twined together, all Derek can think of is how his mom told him not to be long upstairs. So there’s that. And, if she even wondered what they were doing up there while the long minutes ticked by, he knows the guilty expression on his face tells the whole story. And that’s before Stiles hurries forward to give Talia a hug, and tilts his head so that she can take a moment to scent him.

“I’m glad to see you again, sweetheart,” Talia tells him, ruffling her fingers through his damp hair. “Things were way too quiet around here without you.”

Stiles beams.

Lydia and John are seated on the couch. Lydia is wearing one of Laura’s dresses and a pair of leggings. Clean and fresh-faced, she’s beautiful. Peter certainly can’t take his gaze off her. He’s leaning on the set of bookshelves closest to her, his arms folded over his chest. Alan Deaton has also arrived, and is sitting on the stepladder used to get to the top shelves. Talia pulls a chair out from under the old writing desk in the corner, and sets it down in front of the couch.

That leaves the old overstuffed armchair for Derek. He sits, and Stiles squeezes in next to him, more on his lap than off it. He slides his arms around Derek, and rests his head on his shoulder.

Derek glances at John and finds the man already staring at him.

“John was just saying he wasn’t sure what the Hale pack gets out of this deal,” Talia says, raising her eyebrows. “Derek?”

“We get Stiles,” Derek says softly. “ _I_ get Stiles. He’s…he’s my mate.”

It might be the first time he’s said the word in front of Stiles. Derek feels a tiny spike of panic—what if Stiles isn’t ready to talk about this?—but Stiles only huffs softly against his throat, and wriggles closer. Derek’s wolf preens proudly. Of course Stiles has already figured it out. He’s whip smart.

“I don’t know what that means,” John says steadily.

Stiles sits up straighter. “I means I’m his, and he’s mine, always.” Then he ruins what could have been a truly beautiful sentiment by adding matter-of-factly: “We already fuck, you know.”

Derek is going to die on the end of a wolfsbane-poisoned arrow. For real, this time.

“Jesus Christ,” John says.

Peter almost chokes on a strangled laugh. 

Stiles frowns at Peter then shrugs. “What? We _do_ fuck! We just _did_!”

Derek doesn’t want to wait for John to kill him. He wants to die right now.

“Okay, kiddo,” John croaks. “I believe you.”

Stiles looked riled, like he gets when he knows he’s missed something.

“So, yes,” Talia says with an amused smile. “We get Stiles.”

“No take backs,” John mutters, and Derek knows exactly where Stiles gets his wicked sense of humor.

“What?” Stiles grumbles.

Derek wraps his arms around Stiles and laughs softly into his ear. Later, he’ll try and explain exactly how the words _“we fuck”_ have no place in a conversation with parents. And, after Derek’s growled at whichever helpful sibling put the word in Stiles’s vocabulary to begin with, he’ll try and explain that what they do is so much more than that.

Stiles is mollified by Derek’s laugh, and snuggles close again.

Talia clears her throat. “So, John, Lydia. While you might distrust our generosity, believe me it’s not entirely altruistic. I want my son to be happy. I want my pack to be happy. And I want Stiles to be happy. And all of that hinges on you.”

Lydia nods slowly. “Your generosity, Alpha Hale, isn’t the first thing we distrust. We distrust your ability to keep us safe.”

“Which is where I believe I come in,” Deaton says.

“Alan is our pack emissary,” Talia says.

“Not in the most traditional sense,” Deaton says. “Obviously I can’t work magic.”

“Why not?” Lydia asks.

Deaton shrugs. “It’s incredibly rare for shifters to be able to work magic. Almost unheard of, in fact, whereas historically humans were often known to have the ability. Perhaps it’s a question of balance, of nature evening out the playing field.”

“It didn’t help us much in the end,” Lydia points out.

“No,” Deaton agrees mildly. “It didn’t. But it might still have its uses. I know the emissary books very well. I know the spells and the charms, despite not having the ability to work them. And, as Peter told you, there are spells in the books that can apparently disguise a human’s scent. If they work, then, in theory, you’d be able to walk down Main Street in the middle of peak hour and nobody would even guess you weren’t a wolf.”

Lydia looks like she doesn’t believe it.

“I know the spells,” Deaton says. “I can’t do them myself, but I can teach you, if you’re willing to learn.”

“The entire enterprise rests on that,” Peter says, unfolding his arms at last. “If we can manage that, then there’s no reason you and your people can’t live on our territory.”

Lydia exchanges a look with John, and then nods sharply. “Well, let’s have a look at these books, shall we?”

 

***

 

If Derek thought their first night back at home would be spent together, he’s wrong. Stiles ends up on the living room couch, buried under an avalanche of Hale kids. Then, when Laura eventually manages to herd the kids upstairs to bed, Stiles is eager to show John the kitchen, and the cookie jars. Derek trails along with them, wanting to give them time alone, but also unable to let Stiles from his sight for now.

Then, when Stiles has filled up on cookies, he shyly asks John to tuck him in.

John follows him up to his room.

“You remember I used to do this every night?” John asks.

“Yeah.” Stiles clutches Wolfie to his chest as his dad pulls up the blankets. “You and Mom.”

For a second Derek sees the child that Stiles once was, and he’s grateful that John’s here to do this for him again. Stiles was so small when he was lost that he’s never outgrown his need for this. It was ripped from him way too early.

“Love you, kiddo,” John says, and leans down to kiss Stiles’s forehead.

“Love you,” Stiles echoes, and sighs happily.

 

***

 

John is sharing a guest room with Lydia. When Derek shows him to it, Laura and Kaylee are just finishing making the twin beds.

“Thank you,” John says warily as they wish him goodnight and leave.

“I know you’re uneasy,” Derek says. “I know you don’t trust us…”

“I’ve spent the last eight years thinking that the monster who ripped my wife apart did the same thing to my son,” John says quietly. “It’s going to take some time for me to adjust to the fact that not only is my boy alive, but that he was saved by wolves. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize.”

John rubs his forehead. “I think that I do, Derek. It’s obvious that your family, your pack, are good people. I mean, we shot you and your uncle, and now you’re offering to help us.” He shakes his head and gives a rueful laugh. “That’s gonna take a while to sink in.”

“I don’t blame you for that,” Derek tells him. He thinks of the painting Stiles did of his mother, the one he splattered with red. “You were defending your people.”

John nods, and then straightens up and squares his shoulders. “The whole mate thing. I don’t really know what that means.”

“It means that I’ll protect him. It means I’ll provide for him, and never hurt him.”

John holds his gaze. “Do you love my son?”

“Yes.” Derek doesn’t even hesitate.

John nods again. “Then that’s something we have in common.”

It’s enough to build on. It’s more than enough. Stiles is the most important thing in Derek’s life, and he’s the most important thing in John’s as well. Derek and John might be from different worlds, but they’re both circling the same sun.

Sooner or later, they’ll fall into alignment.

That’s how the universe works.


	22. Chapter 22

Derek has no idea exactly what Deaton, Peter and Lydia spend their hours doing locked away in the library, but the house smells weird. It smells of aniseed and bloodroot and honeysuckle. It smells of frankincense, tansy and vervain. It smells of rosemary, periwinkle and wormwood. And those are only the scents that Derek can identify.

The pack, noses twitching, starts to avoid the library. Derek has no idea how Alan and Peter can stand it. Some days, he hears laughter.

Some days he doesn’t hear anything over the sound of his own laughter, because Stiles is back and the universe seems so much lighter.

Stiles settles back in at the house like he never left it. He starts to paint and draw again, often to the accompaniment of Jacob’s xylophone. He helps Cassie read her picture books during the day and, at night, sits with Mark and reads aloud from books meant for older children. He still stumbles over a lot of words—they come more easily to his memory than to his eye—but he’s making steady progress every day. Sometimes John watches, and Derek can see that he’s torn between pride and heartbreak. Pride, because his son is so clever. Heartbreak, because every step he makes reminds them all of the years he spent living feral.

Derek and William head out into the Preserve, Stiles and John with them, to check out a few potential sites for housing the humans. The best site is a slightly elevated clearing several miles from the house. It’s surrounded by woodlands, but clear enough that the any solar panels will get full benefit of the sun. It’s also safely in the middle of Hale territory; tens of miles from the border with the national forest, and even further from any roads.

“This is all Hale territory,” William tells them. “And it’s big enough that we can avoid running here on full moon.”

“Is that a problem?” John asks, surveying the clearing.

“We want to give you your privacy,” Derek says. “We don’t want you to feel threatened.”

“Do we need to lock our doors on full moon?” John asks frankly.

“You’ll be under our pack’s protection,” William tells him. “We won’t see you as prey.”

John doesn’t look entirely convinced, until Stiles laughs and tells him that once, when Derek was away at college, he let himself outside on a full moon night, and suddenly he was surrounded by wolves. And he ran with them for as long as he could keep up, and then he was tired, but James let him ride him all the way back to the house, because James is a _huge_ wolf.

“And then everyone ate rabbit, except I was allowed to cook mine,” he finishes with a grin. “Well, Amy cooked it. I’m still not allowed to use the oven.”

Derek knows there’s a story there, and William opens his mouth to tell it before Stiles cuts him off.

“That was one time, Uncle William! _One time_!”

William punches him gently on the shoulder, then looks around the clearing again. “Getting the shipping containers in will be a pain in the ass.”

“We’ll need to clear a road for a truck,” Derek agrees.

“I’ll get our surveyors working on it,” William says.

It’s going to be impossible to keep the entire project a secret, not just because they’ll need to use outside contractors, but because Beacon Hills is a relatively small town and people are going to notice something, even if it’s just the delivery of around twenty empty shipping containers to the Preserve.

Talia and Laura are already working on spreading the cover story about a distantly related pack up in Canada who’ve been displaced in a territorial dispute and may be staying with the Hales for a while. It’s the sort of thing that happens once in a while, and Laura says most people have just voiced the sympathies for the unfortunate pack, and praised the Hales for their charity. Talia and Laura are hoping that eventually any gossip will die down, and people will simply forget about the Canadian pack and assume, since they never saw them in town, that they moved on again.

It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s the closest they’ve got. And, as Laura points out, if anyone asks too many questions Talia can tell them, with all the authority of the Alpha of Beacon Hills, to go fuck themselves.

Derek is sure his mom will phrase it a little more diplomatically than that.

On the sixth day after they arrived home from the wilderness, Derek passes the library door and realizes that, for the first time, he doesn’t smell anything.

Nothing at all.

Not even Lydia.

He can hear her inside, talking, but he can’t smell her.

All he can smell is wolves.

 

***

 

Alex is nervous. “He’s not a science experiment, you know!”

“We know.” Derek hands him his fifth shirt to try on.

Alex growls and wrenches it from him. He holds it up against his chest, huffs in the mirror, and drops the shirt on his floor. “These are horrible! Why do I only have horrible shirts?”

“You could wear a pretty dress,” Stiles points out.

“No, I can’t. His parents are going to be here too, and…” Alex chews his thumbnail aggressively. “Can I?”

“I like the green one,” Stiles says. “You look good in the green one. It matches your eyes.”

Alex looks worriedly at Derek.

“You do look good in the green one,” Derek tells him.

“I could wear it over leggings.” Alex takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’m gonna wear that.”

Which then causes another panic, because his shade of nail polish is all wrong. Any other sibling, and Derek would roll his eyes at this kind of diva behavior, but he can’t bring himself to do that with Alex. Alex is only panicking about his clothes because he doesn’t want to focus on what’s really bothering him: that if he shows Jason exactly who he is, he’ll get rejected.

Alex and Stiles sit down on Alex’s floor, and paint their nails together. When Stiles leans forward, his amulet hangs out of his shirt. It’s looks like nothing more than a little wooden disk on a leather cord, with some sort of complicated rune carved into it, but it’s so much more than that. It’s the reason that Stiles doesn’t smell like himself anymore. He smells like a wolf. It’s the reason that Jason and his parents have been formally invited to dinner tonight: to see if this can actually work.

Alex’s tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth as he paints his nails carefully. Stiles is much more haphazard. He picks a different color for every nail, and doesn’t give a damn if he accidentally paints his fingers as well. Derek hopes Alex never discovers cosmetics with Stiles. Stiles will end up looking like a clown. Subtlety is not his strongest suit.

“I mean, I know it’s not a big deal,” Alex says, talking himself out of how much this might mean. “I know Mom only invited them because she had to invite _someone_ , so it doesn’t really matter or anything.”

“Alex.” Derek doesn’t want to make his little brother’s nerves worse, but he also doesn’t want to listen to him convince himself that he’s not important. “Mom could have invited anyone. She invited the Cormacks because, now that we can have an open door policy again, Jason was at the top of the list.”

Alex’s cheeks go pink. “He probably doesn’t want to date me anymore.”

Stiles looks outraged. “Alex! Does he have _eyes_?”

Derek tries not to remember that the last time Stiles used a variation of that line they were naked together in the shower.

“If I wasn’t mated to Derek, I’d be all up in your business, you’re so damn hot!” Stiles exclaims.

Alex’s jaw drops. “Omigod. All up in my business? Where are you even learning these things you say?”

“TV,” Stiles grins.

“Idiot,” Alex says.

“Asshole,” Stiles returns happily.

“Fu—”

“Okay!” Derek announces. “I’m telling Mom on both of you!”

He gets a pair of matching evil glares, and Stiles throws a coat hanger at him.

It misses by a mile.

 

***

 

“Hello, Jason,” Talia says when she opens the door. “Welcome to my home. Please, come in.”

“Th-thank you, Alpha Hale,” Jason finally spits out when his father elbows him in the ribs.

Derek knows he should be paying attention to Jason and his parents’ reactions in stepping inside and being potentially exposed to the unfamiliar scent of humans, but he can’t. Not once Jason sees Alex descending the stairs in his green dress, the halter neck leaving his shoulders bare and a wavering smile on his face that’s caught somewhere between nervous happiness and sheer fucking terror.

Jason’s draw drops.

His father elbows him again.

“Hi, Alex,” Jason squeaks. “You look… you look _beautiful_.”

Both boys blush bright red and stare at their feet.

“Ian, Mary,” Talia says. “I’d like you to meet Stiles, my son Derek’s mate. And his father John, and his packmate Lydia.”

Jason’s parents are polite and friendly, and probably both secretly wondering why Stiles is grinning like a maniac as he shakes their hands eagerly. John and Lydia are much more reserved, which puts Ian and Mary at ease. There’s no indication that the Cormacks can scent anything apart from wolves.

Dinner starts off formal and polite, but quickly descends into the barely-controlled chaos of any Hale family meal. The Cormacks appear to take it all in their stride, so Derek guesses their own family isn’t much different. That’s good to know. Alex and Jason sit next to each other, exchanging the occasional shy smile but mostly looking in different directions. Derek suspects they’re holding hands under the table though. He can smell the happiness rolling off both of them.

John and Lydia converse politely with the Cormacks, sticking to the cover story about being from Canada, and having been displaced because of a territorial dispute. Any gaps in the story, Derek hopes, can be excused by a reluctance to talk publically about such a sensitive topic.

All in all, the dinner goes better than Derek hopes. Although, looking back, he’s not sure what was more traumatizing: stumbling over Alex and Jason making out in the downstairs bathroom, then, in an effort to escape that, retreating to the library and finding Peter and Lydia doing the same thing.

Stiles cackles evilly when Derek tells him, hours later.

“So what? When other people do it, it’s gross, but when we do it, it’s hot?”

“Yes,” Derek tells him. “Exactly!”

Stiles waggles his eyebrows, and tugs his shirt over his head. “Come and be gross with me, Derek!”

Gladly.

 

***

 

Derek and William rent a warehouse in town. The first of the shipping containers are delivered on a Monday morning. By Tuesday, Boyd has arrived and has been officially hired. He’s taken time off school for this, which he put down as work experience. William is happy to sign off on it and, if Boyd is as good as Derek promises, has agreed to offer him a job at the firm once he graduates.

“So,” Boyd says as he goes over Derek’s plans, “I thought we said tiny houses were a fad.”

“We did say that,” Derek agrees.

“And I thought we said they didn’t suit wolves,” Boyd continues.

“We said that too.”

Boyd inspects the plans more closely. “And you said this is like emergency accommodation?”

“Yeah.”

Boyd’s problem is that he’s too clever. “Surely something with a shared communal sleeping area would suit a displaced pack more.”

“Except we’re building tiny houses,” Derek tells him firmly.

“Okay,” Boyd says, giving him the side eye. “Tiny houses it is.”

Derek throws himself into the project, because it’s better than thinking about how much he’s missing Stiles. Stiles and John and Lydia have gone back to the Mendocino to collect the rest of the humans. Peter and James and Laura have gone with them. Kaylee and Amy went too, and drove the SUVs back. Everyone else is walking out. Peter estimates it will take them about two and a half weeks, as long as the weather holds. Which gives Derek two and a half weeks to get twenty-one tiny houses assembled in the warehouse, transported out to the Preserve, and hooked up to power and water.

It’s going to be crazy, even with the rest of the pack helping out where they can. But the strength of a project like this has always been its simplicity. Build one tiny house, and you can build twenty-one just as easily.

It takes a week to get the first house completed, but once all the tiny design problems are ironed out, the others begin to take shape quickly. Derek and Boyd work in the warehouse with a team of local contractors under them, while William and his surveyors prepare the site out at the Preserve.

The rest of the pack works on the smaller details: bedding and furnishings and kitchenware. Matty and Alex build a chicken coop. When they go to buy chickens, they come back with three goats as well. Mark, who was driving, swears he has no idea how that happened, but Derek admits it’s a good idea. Clare visits the hardware store and stocks up on basic gardening tools and seeds for the humans. There’s no reason they can’t try and grow some of their own food once they’ve settled in. The soil in the Preserve is good and rich, and they can water their crops with gray water.

If Boyd wonders why their emergency accommodation is starting to look more and more like a long-term settlement, and Derek knows he’s too smart not to wonder, he doesn’t comment. He just suggests including woodchip biofilters in the gray water system.

By the end of the second week, the houses are on site and the real work begins: hooking up the plumbing and the solar power. They get water trucked in to fill all the tanks to start with, and spend the next four days making sure that everything _works_.

It’s only when he’s sure it does that Derek actually stops to take and breath and look at what they’ve built.

It’s not pretty, but it’s serviceable, and it’s a hell of a lot better than the camp the humans were living in. And eventually they’ll be able to paint their houses, or do some landscaping, and add all those touches that will make the tiny settlement feel like a home. For now it’s enough that they won’t be struggling to survive every day. Here, they can be self-sufficient, but help is only a few miles away if they need it.

Before he heads back to Stanford, Boyd claps Derek on the shoulder. “So, I won’t ask if I can use this as a case study. I’m pretty sure you don’t want any of our professors coming out to check it out, right?”

“You could say that.” It’s the closest Derek has come to an admission.

Boyd smiles. “But you know one day I want to meet this mysterious Canadian mate of yours that you never even once mentioned at school.” He catches Derek’s surprised look. “To do all this for him? He must be pretty special.”

“Once in a lifetime,” Derek agrees, and returns Boyd’s smile.

 

***

 

Four days later, just on dusk, they hear Peter’s howl echoing through the Preserve.

He sounds tired but proud.

Talia answers him, and the pack heads through the Preserve to meet them.

Three wolves and thirty-nine humans.

That first night, Talia introduces herself to every single one of the humans, smiling at them all and asking after their welfare. They’re tired and hungry and filthy, nothing that the Hales can’t fix for them. Every one of them is wearing an amulet that disguises their scent. Talia makes sure she clasps their hands in greeting, scenting them as unobtrusively as she can for now. Making them smell not just like wolves, but like the Hale pack. Like they belong.

Actual belonging, Derek knows, will take a little longer.

Deaton is on hand to patch up blisters and cuts.

Amy and Kaylee have made enough sandwiches to feed twice as many people.

Derek and William take turns showing people their houses, and explaining how to use the showers and the sink and the power.

Clare has bought out most of the local charity shop, so that the humans have clean clothes to change into.

It’s late by the time Derek has a moment to draw Stiles aside. Stiles is bone weary, but he’s grinning.

“It’s the best, Derek, it’s the _best_!”

Derek kisses him. “I hope you like it.”

“You hope _they_ like it,” Stiles corrects him.

“What?”

“You hope _they_ like it,” Stiles repeats. He holds Derek tightly and presses his mouth against his throat. Nuzzles in like he did when he was a kit. “I’m not staying here. I’m coming home with you.”


	23. Chapter 23

_Four months later._

 

“Derek, I’m worried about tomorrow.”

“I know. Me too.”

Stiles sighs in the darkness, and wriggles closer to Derek. One of these days, Derek figures, they should probably give up the old box room and just admit that Stiles sleeps in Derek’s bed every night. It’s not like the entire pack doesn’t know. Or every single human in the Preserve.

“Mom’s never bitten anyone before,” Stiles says. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“It’s going to work,” Derek tells him, sliding his hand down Stiles’s spine as Stiles leans into him. “It _has_ to work.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, his breath shaky. “Okay.”

They don’t sleep, and Derek knows they’re not the only ones.

Downstairs, Talia is still awake. Deaton is with her. Talia has been researching the bite for weeks now, and Deaton promises that instinct will tell her what to do, but Derek knows she’s still worried. Sometimes the bite was fatal to humans, and it seems there’s no real way of knowing if a human is at risk or not.

Derek closes his eyes for a moment.

But he’s young. He’s strong. He can survive this.

Derek has to believe that.

 

***

 

In the morning, Stiles is out of bed early and already in the kitchen making breakfast with Amy when Derek drags himself downstairs.

“We’re having pancakes,” Stiles says. He’s got batter all over him.

“You look like a pancake,” Derek tells him, and Stiles snorts when Derek leans in to lick a glob of batter off his cheek.

“Ew!”

Amy just laughs at them.

Stiles grins and jokes as they fix breakfast, but he can’t quite disguise his anxiety. It makes him jittery, and Derek tries to reassure him with quick touches, but he’s just as worried himself.

It’s an ordinary Tuesday morning. Winter is almost here again, and the morning air is sharp. Just an ordinary Tuesday morning, except it’s not.

Nobody has been bitten in generations. There is no living wolf who can tell Talia exactly what to do. When she appears in the kitchen she looks tired, and Derek knows she’s probably been awake all night, going through the old books in the library to make sure there’s nothing she’s missed. Except, in the end, this is all going to come down to chance.

“Mom?” Stiles asks in a small voice.

Talia pulls him into a hug. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s going to be okay.”

Stiles stays in the kitchen. He doesn’t eat with the rest of the pack. Derek stays with him, washing the dishes. Stiles offers to dry, and drops two plates before Derek very firmly sits him at the table and tells him to stay there. Stiles jiggles his leg and chews his lip and stinks of worry.

The pack heads off for work and school, on this very ordinary Tuesday morning.

Laura stays home to watch Jacob and Cassie, and that’s the only concession made. Nobody is sure if Talia will be up to looking after the little ones when this is done. If things go right, she’ll want to stay close to her newest beta. And if things go wrong…

Derek stops that thought in its tracks.

Things are _not_ going to go wrong.

Derek takes Stiles into the living room to wait. It’s not long before he hears people approaching through the Preserve. Three distinct sets of footprints. Three elevated heartbeats. Stiles’s hearing is nowhere near as keen as Derek’s, but he reads the sudden change of expression on his face.

“They’re here?”

Derek nods.

Stiles races out the back to meet them: John and Melissa and Scott. They all reek of the same worry as Stiles.

“Okay,” Stiles says after he hugs them. “Okay, let’s do this.”

He leads them into the house.

Laura takes the kids upstairs. Minutes later, Peter comes downstairs with Lydia trailing along behind him. Lydia has been spending more nights with Peter recently than she has with the humans. Derek had seen the first and only attempt Talia had made at asking Peter if he was sure that was a good idea. Peter had only grinned broadly and replied that he thought it was his best idea ever. In many ways Lydia is exactly like his ex: sarcastic, devious and hard to please. But in all other ways, in the ways that matter, she’s nothing like Patricia. Scratch that cold surface, and underneath Lydia is warm and loyal and loving. Peter is ridiculously smitten, and has taken to wandering around with a huge smile on his face.

Not this morning though. This morning he looks grave.

He claps a hand on Derek’s shoulder, and follows him into the library.

Talia is waiting with Deaton at her side. “Are we ready?”

Scott, nodding nervously, steps forward, and offers her his wrist.

Talia laces her fingers through his and squeezes his hand.

Derek puts an arm around Stiles.

John reaches for Melissa’s hand. Melissa blinks, and tears slide down her face.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Scott says, then shows Talia a shaky smile. “It’s okay.”

Talia’s eyes flare alpha red, and she bites him.

 

***

 

Derek doesn’t know what he expected. Something more dramatic, maybe.

“Ow,” Scott says, and hisses sharply.

And that’s it, really.

Then they wait.

 

***

 

Stiles and Scott play video games. They’re both terrible at them, but they're the same level of terrible, so it’s still an even match. It takes an hour for Scott to start to feel woozy. An hour after that and he’s feverish, and Peter carries him up to one of the spare rooms. Talia and Deaton sit with him.

Derek makes coffee, and listens to Melissa try and hold back her tears.

“I mean, I know. I know he had to try this, because it’s getting colder, and his attacks were getting worse, but it’s one thing to tell yourself he might not have lasted the winter, and another thing to know he might not last the day!”

“He’s a strong kid, Mel,” John says. “He’ll be okay. He’ll be okay.”

Derek had been there when Scott had his last asthma attack. He’d seen him struggling to breathe. Seen his lips turn blue. If Derek hadn't been able to hear his weak heartbeat, he would have thought he was dead. 

Melissa seems to suddenly notice Derek at the kitchen counter. “If it doesn’t work, I won’t blame Talia. Please tell her that, if—if I can’t.”

“I will,” Derek promises, and sets two mugs of coffee down for them. "But it's not going to come to that, okay?" 

Melissa nods tearfully. 

Stiles and Peter and Lydia are on the couch in the living room. Lydia is staring into space. Peter is holding her hand. At first Derek thinks Stiles is drawing, but when he gets close he sees that he’s just dragging his thumbnail over and over a blank page in his sketchpad, scouring furrows in the thick paper.

They wait.

 

***

 

“Mom!”

Derek jerks awake as Scott comes barreling down the stairs. Everyone scrambles from the couch and rushes into the hallway. When they get there, Scott is hugging Melissa, lifting her off her feet and spinning her around.

“Mom, I can breathe!” Scott inhales deeply and, for once, the sound is clear. For once there’s no choking fit following the simplest exertion. “I can breathe!”

Melissa is laughing through her tears.

Derek looks up and sees Talia standing at the top of the steps. She looks exhausted, and relieved. She looks like she’s on the verge of tears herself, and she’s not the only one.

Scott sets Melissa down at last, and Stiles launches himself at him.

“Welcome to the pack, Scotty!”

 

***

 

Stiles is drunk on happiness. He’s alight with it. He spends the night darting between Scott and his dad, between Talia and Alex, between humans and wolves, between the grill and the coolers, his grin stretched so wide that it looks almost painful, as though all that happiness is too much for his body to contain.

Derek, sitting on a picnic blanket with Sarah and Erin, the little human girl, just watches him, and can’t stop his own smile from spreading over his face.

It’s been a week since Scott got the bite, and, apart from a few problems understanding his own strength— _“Whoops. Sorry, Alpha Hale.”_ — his control has been extraordinary. Stiles says it’s because Scott’s about as aggressive as a fluffy bunny, and Derek secretly agrees. He’s seen the way Scott looks at his mom though, and at John and at Stiles, and knows that if they were ever threatened Scott would absolutely show his claws and fangs. Derek can respect that.

He looks up as his brother Patrick sits down beside him, burger in hand.

“Der,” Patrick says for the hundredth time since arriving home yesterday, “this is _crazy_.”

“Crazier than spending the last nine months covering the pack wars in Ukraine?” Derek asks dryly. Talia and James have not forgiven Patrick for failing to mention _that_ in every email.  

“Have to win my Pulitzer somehow.” Patrick grins. “Anyway, if I’d known things were this exciting back here, I would have come home earlier.”

“Uh, you came home with shrapnel inside you! And a _wife_.” The two aren’t related at all. The shrapnel is from Debaltseve. The wife is from New Zealand, and another thing Talia and James are going to take a long time to forgive. Not that Helena isn’t wonderful, just that Patrick went and did another life-changing thing without letting anyone know.

“Yeah,” Patrick agrees, sounding as chastened as he ever does. Which is not at all. “I guess I should leave it for a few days to break it to Mom that Hel’s pregnant.”

“Who’s pregnant?” Sarah asks loudly, twisting around to glare suspiciously at both of them.

“Or maybe I should go and talk to her right now,” Patrick decides, and hurries away.

Sarah and Erin finish their burgers and race away to play tag with the other kids.

A few minutes later, Stiles drops down onto the blanket beside Derek. He’s still wearing his broad grin. He stretches out on his back, which invites Derek to do exactly the same thing.

“Happy?” Derek asks him.

Stiles rolls toward him, snuggling close. He ends up with his head on Derek’s shoulder, and one leg hooked over him. “I don’t even have the words.” His grin fades as he lifts his head and brushes a kiss against Derek’s lips. “Sometimes I don’t have words for things because I’ve forgotten them or never learned them, but this time it’s different.”

Derek cards his fingers through Stiles’s hair. “How is it different?”

Stiles’s eyes are bright. “This time I don’t think there are enough words in the world to say just how happy I really am, how big it feels. How…how sometimes I can hardly breathe because I’m already so full.” He makes a face. “Ugh. I don’t know. See? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Derek kisses him, his chest swelling. “I think it makes perfect sense.”

Stiles huffs out a breath of laughter against his lips. “You always say the right things. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Derek says, and wraps his arms around Stiles and breathes in the scent of him. His wolf rumbles in approval.

_Home._

_Pack._

_Family._

_Stiles._

Everything is perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone, for reading this, and taking the time to comment or leave kudos. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I hope I tied up most of those loose ends by the last chapter. 
> 
> Also, I don't know where you guys have been sharing this or talking about it, but it has got a LOT of hits in the past few days. So whatever you're doing, you're ALL AWESOME and should keep doing it, and come over to my house later for cookies. Or alcohol. Or both. 
> 
> Well, I guess the entire thing turned out to be a whole lot sweeter and a whole lot less smutty than I thought, but a change is as good as a holiday! 
> 
>  
> 
> *** 
> 
>  
> 
> As a bonus, here are the notes I made for the Hale pack, just in case I never made it clear who was who in the zoo, and if you're actually interested. Most, of course, are OCs: 
> 
> Talia, lawyer. Husband James, who builds custom furniture.  
> Their kids: 
> 
> Laura, 25, lawyer. Husband Mark, teacher. Kids Cassie 4 and Jacob, 2  
> Patrick, 23, away at college. Studying journalism.  
> Derek 22, college. Architecture.  
> Cora 17.  
> Alex, 13.  
> Matty, 12
> 
> Peter, Talia's brother. Art historian. Prof at Stanford.  
> Malia, Peter’s daughter, 16. 
> 
>  
> 
> William, Talia and Peter’s youngest brother. Architect.  
> Kaylee, his wife, works in Amy’s coffee shop.  
> Their kids: Sarah and Nate, 6 
> 
> Clare, Talia’s youngest sister. Landscaping business.  
> Amy, her mate. Owns coffee shop. Together 15 years.


End file.
